Comedy based on a university campus seems to enjoy a revival every decade or so. I remember 'A Very Peculiar Practice' (1986-8) which ran while I was studying at the University of Warwick and was apparently based on occurrences that had happened there as the author, Andrew Davis, had studied there. In particular the American vice chancellor and the incompetent doctor who served the university's medical centre and was still doing so while I was a student, were referenced. Previously there had been 'The History Man' (novel 1975; television 1981) by my old friend Malcolm Bradbury, set at the fictional university of Watermouth apparently modelled on Brighton, though Lancaster University, the University of Sussex and the University of East Anglia where Bradbury taught have also been cited. That story was as much about the sexual and political mores of males in the 1970s as about university life. Also worth mentioning is 'The Comic Strip Presents - The Summer School' (1983) shot at the University of East Anglia.
I saw the other day that David Lodge's 'campus trilogy': 'Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses' (1975), 'Small World: An Academic Romance' (novel 1984; television series 1988) and 'Nice Work' (novel 1988; television series 1989) has been re-released. Like Bradbury, Lodge has long worked in universities. A lot of this fiction pokes gentle fun at places which most of the population never went close to. With the rise in the level of eighteen-year olds attending university from 6% at the time 'A Very Peculiar Practice' was showing to 42% today it is probably to be expected that with them coming more into the experience of young people and their 'helicopter' parents that a university would be the basis for more situation comedies in particular.
Last year actually saw two university situation comedies. The first was 'Campus' which had been piloted in 2009. It attained very low viewing figures and it was easy to see why. Rather than using the university setting as a microcosm to reflect on wider society as these other stories had done, it was specifically about the interaction between academics and their very particular concerns such as research profile, issues that mean nothing to students let alone the large mass of the population. It was as engaging as a comedy about the teaching staff of Eton would have been. In addition it was simply not funny, despite being produced by the same team as the far more successful 'Green Wing' (2004-7) hospital situation comedy; it certainly lacked the wit of Bradbury or Lodge. Interestingly the biggest impact (if true) is that I have been told that Brunel University (located in West London rather than Bristol as you might have expected) removed a sculpture of the word 'Brunel' made of free-standing red plastic letters as in 'Campus' the university featured, Kirke University, had something identical.
The second university situation comedy of 2011 was 'Fresh Meat', also shown on Channel 4, but to a much warmer response. One reason for this is that it came from the perspective of six students sharing a house. Unlike many portrayals of universities on television, this was up-to-date given all the news about first-year students being unable to be accommodated in student halls and being farmed out into houses. It seems to be set at Manchester Metropolitan University. It features a cross-section of students studying geology, dentistry and English literature including the rather rebellious Vod (Zawe Ashton) who looks like a classic lesbian but is straight and geek Howard (Greg McHugh); more mainstream sometimes almost couple Josie (Kimberley Nixon) and Kingsley (Joe Thomas) as well as the upper middle class 'Oregon' (real name Melissa, played by Charlotte Ritchie) and upper class J.P. played by stand-up comedian Jack Whitehall who makes much play of his social class in his comedy. There were criticisms about the fact that sex featured so highly in the series. However, I feel that this reflects reality. Back in the 1980s 40% of students graduated as virgins but we live in different times and with 34% of UK boys and 38% of UK girls having sex before 16 in 2008, this is not surprising. In my day even when people were not having sex they were still angsting about it and I doubt that has died out.
The show is contemporary in approach in most things. The classes it shows are far too small for the size that is actually the case certainly over the past decade. However, at least it moves a few increments on from most drama series which show all universities, no matter how modern as having a kind of Oxbridge supervisory system that even Oxbridge no longer has.
There is of course the staff-student relationship between 'Oregon' and Professor Tony Shales, something which seems to be compulsory for any story featuring universities to include. Whilst I may be tired of that kind of relationship being portrayed I have to confess I have worked with two women who have married their lecturers and whilst in and around universities knew at least three male academic staff who had married or had long-term relationships with particular students. The one aspect that all television dramas about universities seem to miss that these days with more mature students (officially defined as students over 25 in UK or 26 in continental Europe), though with fees their numbers are dropping away, it is more than likely that an academic will encounter single or divorced students their own age which seems far more likely to spark a relationship than them chasing 18 year olds. However, I have never seen such a relationship shown in the media. The closest is 'Educating Rita' (play 1980; movie 1983) and in that case the sexual relationship was ruled out primarily on social class grounds
'Fresh Meat' does address concerns of contemporart students, showing the revival of student radicalism in these 'Occupy' times but this sitting alongside the usual worries about grades and relationships. The fact that most of the characters come from comfortable middle class families if not upper class ones accurately reflects the UK university system which has seen a stagnation in working class recruitment since 2002. The real growth in attendance in universities has been among the less capable siblings of middle class people who would normally have gone anyway. The characters of 'Oregon' and J.P. are reflective of those who go to university but Vod, Josie and Kingsley do not come from impoverished backgrounds either. 'Oregon''s attempts to appear more ordinary than she is, much to Vod's changrin is again spot on target.
It is not a laugh out loud series, more one in which you go 'yes, that is so true', things like the friends you try to get rid of and the boy/girlfriends from home who cling on to students yet believing they are more 'real' than anyone studying at university. The issues around parties remain pretty much the same as they always have been. In some ways the series is a more grounded version of 'The Young Ones' (1981) but in my view is both entertaining and engaging. Channel 4 has sensibly decided to keep 'Fresh Meat' live on its 4OD service and I recommend you go and watch it there: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/fresh-meat/4od
Showing posts with label universities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label universities. Show all posts
Saturday, 11 February 2012
Friday, 5 August 2011
Student Inflow/Outflow
This is something I guess been aware of since when I first moved to southern England in 2005, but has come home more to me now that for much of my time I am living in West London. For some reason around where I am living are lots of educational institutions from primary school right up to universities and so simply travelling to work I see a cross-section of our being-educated public of all ages. Of course, for the moment all of them, even the university students are on their summer holidays (though universities seem to be all Americanised now with semesters rather than terms and they have always had vacations rather than holidays). However, I noticed that this did not seem to make the university campuses any quieter, in their place are literally thousands of young people who seem to range from about 12-16 years old. Saying that I have seen some Chinese students who look about 9-10 years old. That might be the case, I imagine a British mother would be loath to send their child 8,000 Km for the summer, but I might be wrong. Anyway, the bulk of them seem to be teenagers. The nationalities I can make out have included French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and some East Europeans, I am unfamiliar with East European languages so could not tell you whether they were Poles, Czechs or Russians, perhaps from the Baltic States. It is heartening that the immigration policies that threatened to kill the language school trade in the UK have been bent sufficiently not to choke off this important industry.
Anyway, each university seems to have been colonised by a one or more language schools run by energetic young staff in bright teeshirts for the summer. I guess this works well for all concerned. The school gets a purpose built teaching space and accommodation with a convenience store and cafes that all universities seem to have and the university presumably gets lots of fees at a time when the campus would normally be empty. It also seems to employ lots of young graduates as organisers and language teachers at a time when any jobs that can be created especially for people under 24, are desperately needed. Though I did not really notice it at the time, I now realise I have witnessed the same occurrence in Hampshire and Devon too. Madly I had forgotten the two students who lodged in my house last year, I somehow put them in a different box, perhaps because I was only seeing one of them rather than large clusters and generally I am not in areas where students or tourists go. I guess that it is simply the draw of London and the scale of the operations in the capital that make it more apparent, maybe simply my route to work. One point to note is how uniformly dressed so many of these students are, fitting in very much with what Niall Ferguson was saying in his series earlier in the year, that a teenager from Beijing now is a replica of one from Madrid in the clothing and electronic equipment that they have.
I have no idea how much it costs for a 14-year old to be sent from Beijing or Madrid to London for a number of weeks, I guess they come for a fortnight, perhaps it is more. From what I can ascertain and referencing the other examples I now recognise I have witnessed, they seem to get teaching in English all morning and then trips out to the standards of British tourism, everything from Bath and Stonehenge to Windsor Castle and the London Eye. Shepherded around I guess they never really encounter the London beyond the campus bounds. It is probably a good thing. Students are never particularly popular even with 42% of British 18-year olds attending university and these groups are certainly noisy as any cluster of teenagers is. What is apparent is their wealth. Sending anyone from China to the UK costs money and these students all seem to have the latest smartphones and fashions. I guess it is something that only the rich middle class parents of various European countries could afford and that is rather alarming, because it shows that even the UK's middle class is lagging behind its neighbours and the Chinese in what is affordable to do. This is of course no surprise given that the real incomes of 90% of the UK population have slid in the last 40 years. Perhaps it would have been affordable in 1975 but not now.
I would like to think that in western Paris or western Madrid there are hundreds of British teenagers there for a fortnight or a month and being drilled in French or Spanish (let alone western Beijing learning Mandarin) mixed in with some sports and some sight-seeing, but know it is not happening. How do I know? Well simply because I read 'The Guardian' newspaper. It is not the font of all knowledge but if you want to get inside the heads of what the Europeanised (and this is what marks 'The Guardian' out from 'The Times' and 'The Daily Telegraph' which are pretty Little England in attitude) middle class aspires to be doing you read 'The Guardian'. I can see no features on packing your 14-year old, let alone 10-year old off to Paris for the summer (unless it is to relatives) to learn a foreign language.
Partly, as I have intimated above, it is the cost: the fact that the British middle class is falling in terms of disposable incomes because very few in Britain are willing to insist on a greater share of the prosperity that heads of companies are clearly benefiting from and did not even before the credit crunch was allowed to happen. I know that these days the middle class holiday is camping in the UK, something once left to the unimaginative and those with no money to go abroad. The other factor seems to be the 'parent fear' that has taken parents by the throat and sends them into hysterics the moment they lose eyeline with their child let alone mobile phone contact. More examples of this were revealed to me this week with accounts of a colleague at a child's birthday party with mothers running around frantically the moment one of their children was lost in the crowd (given there were 50 children in attendance, that was no doubt easy). The middle class has never relished packing their children off to holiday camp the way that their US equivalents have always done, they have never trusted anyone to look after their children and even their trust in teachers has slumped, hence the terminal state of even term-time school trips. The upper class, of course, have been happy to bundle their children off into the care of others almost from the moment they are born and certainly once they turn 8. Even if somehow, middle class real incomes rose, you would never see the equivalent of what I witness with French children (France is nearer to where I am living now than Yorkshire) happening with their British counterparts. The woman in my house worries over the 5-minute walk it would take her 9-year old son to reach school and has already ruled out him going on any trips which involve him sleeping away from home, not that she or I could afford to pay for him to go.
Does it really matter if there is an imbalance in the flow of teenaged language students? Is it not better for the British economy that more are coming into the UK, spending money here, rather than it being balanced up by an outflow. The cost in my view is human. If we go back to Ian Duncan Smith's speech earlier in which he encouraged British employers to take on more British young people, the retort from the CBI was to ask why would any UK company want to do this when it could employ better qualified East Europeans with a real work ethic compared to ill-qualified British people with an attitude of looking out for what they can get from a company. I have no desire for British young people to be compelled to forelock-tugging lackeys, but it does seem that there are skills that they are not getting to compete with people from other parts of Europe. It is not only people from Eastern Europe, apparently around 300,000 French people live in London alone, more than the entire population of Southampton; 123,000 Poles over the age of 16 live in London with 398,000 in other parts of the UK.
Now, I know many people from other parts of the EU returned to their home countries when the recession kicked in and we have not returned to the figures of 2007, but it does suggest there is something that enables such migrants to get work in the UK. It may be that they are cheap labour, but even then 16 year olds have always tended to be cheaper to employ. One clear thing is that the migrants have the confidence to get up and come into the UK and find work in a language which is not their own. How many British 18-year olds or even 21-year olds with a degree in their backpack do that? A key challenge is that they do not speak the language, another is that often they have not ever been in another country, these days, not even on holiday let alone to study. It seems ironic that the Conservatives (and New Labour who are/were minimally different to them) with their occasional forays into attempts at discrimination, are in fact further reinforcing the conditions that hamstring British young people. They have pandered to the tabloid media which have hyped up the fear that a child out of your sight is being abused by a paedophile. They have allowed companies to distort the distribution of profits so whilst bosses' salaries have rocketed the real incomes of 90% of employees have continued to slump unabated. Thus, they have engineered and are sustaining a situation in which a 14-year old from France or Spain or even China is getting the intellectual and personal skills to find work across the world and yet their British counterpart is closeted at home learning nothing beyond the distance between their home and the park. Thus, when I see another coach disgorging a fifty or so teenagers ready for some weeks of language school, I do feel depressed knowing that if I was in one of the other capitals of Europe I would not be witnessing the equivalent with British students.
Anyway, each university seems to have been colonised by a one or more language schools run by energetic young staff in bright teeshirts for the summer. I guess this works well for all concerned. The school gets a purpose built teaching space and accommodation with a convenience store and cafes that all universities seem to have and the university presumably gets lots of fees at a time when the campus would normally be empty. It also seems to employ lots of young graduates as organisers and language teachers at a time when any jobs that can be created especially for people under 24, are desperately needed. Though I did not really notice it at the time, I now realise I have witnessed the same occurrence in Hampshire and Devon too. Madly I had forgotten the two students who lodged in my house last year, I somehow put them in a different box, perhaps because I was only seeing one of them rather than large clusters and generally I am not in areas where students or tourists go. I guess that it is simply the draw of London and the scale of the operations in the capital that make it more apparent, maybe simply my route to work. One point to note is how uniformly dressed so many of these students are, fitting in very much with what Niall Ferguson was saying in his series earlier in the year, that a teenager from Beijing now is a replica of one from Madrid in the clothing and electronic equipment that they have.
I have no idea how much it costs for a 14-year old to be sent from Beijing or Madrid to London for a number of weeks, I guess they come for a fortnight, perhaps it is more. From what I can ascertain and referencing the other examples I now recognise I have witnessed, they seem to get teaching in English all morning and then trips out to the standards of British tourism, everything from Bath and Stonehenge to Windsor Castle and the London Eye. Shepherded around I guess they never really encounter the London beyond the campus bounds. It is probably a good thing. Students are never particularly popular even with 42% of British 18-year olds attending university and these groups are certainly noisy as any cluster of teenagers is. What is apparent is their wealth. Sending anyone from China to the UK costs money and these students all seem to have the latest smartphones and fashions. I guess it is something that only the rich middle class parents of various European countries could afford and that is rather alarming, because it shows that even the UK's middle class is lagging behind its neighbours and the Chinese in what is affordable to do. This is of course no surprise given that the real incomes of 90% of the UK population have slid in the last 40 years. Perhaps it would have been affordable in 1975 but not now.
I would like to think that in western Paris or western Madrid there are hundreds of British teenagers there for a fortnight or a month and being drilled in French or Spanish (let alone western Beijing learning Mandarin) mixed in with some sports and some sight-seeing, but know it is not happening. How do I know? Well simply because I read 'The Guardian' newspaper. It is not the font of all knowledge but if you want to get inside the heads of what the Europeanised (and this is what marks 'The Guardian' out from 'The Times' and 'The Daily Telegraph' which are pretty Little England in attitude) middle class aspires to be doing you read 'The Guardian'. I can see no features on packing your 14-year old, let alone 10-year old off to Paris for the summer (unless it is to relatives) to learn a foreign language.
Partly, as I have intimated above, it is the cost: the fact that the British middle class is falling in terms of disposable incomes because very few in Britain are willing to insist on a greater share of the prosperity that heads of companies are clearly benefiting from and did not even before the credit crunch was allowed to happen. I know that these days the middle class holiday is camping in the UK, something once left to the unimaginative and those with no money to go abroad. The other factor seems to be the 'parent fear' that has taken parents by the throat and sends them into hysterics the moment they lose eyeline with their child let alone mobile phone contact. More examples of this were revealed to me this week with accounts of a colleague at a child's birthday party with mothers running around frantically the moment one of their children was lost in the crowd (given there were 50 children in attendance, that was no doubt easy). The middle class has never relished packing their children off to holiday camp the way that their US equivalents have always done, they have never trusted anyone to look after their children and even their trust in teachers has slumped, hence the terminal state of even term-time school trips. The upper class, of course, have been happy to bundle their children off into the care of others almost from the moment they are born and certainly once they turn 8. Even if somehow, middle class real incomes rose, you would never see the equivalent of what I witness with French children (France is nearer to where I am living now than Yorkshire) happening with their British counterparts. The woman in my house worries over the 5-minute walk it would take her 9-year old son to reach school and has already ruled out him going on any trips which involve him sleeping away from home, not that she or I could afford to pay for him to go.
Does it really matter if there is an imbalance in the flow of teenaged language students? Is it not better for the British economy that more are coming into the UK, spending money here, rather than it being balanced up by an outflow. The cost in my view is human. If we go back to Ian Duncan Smith's speech earlier in which he encouraged British employers to take on more British young people, the retort from the CBI was to ask why would any UK company want to do this when it could employ better qualified East Europeans with a real work ethic compared to ill-qualified British people with an attitude of looking out for what they can get from a company. I have no desire for British young people to be compelled to forelock-tugging lackeys, but it does seem that there are skills that they are not getting to compete with people from other parts of Europe. It is not only people from Eastern Europe, apparently around 300,000 French people live in London alone, more than the entire population of Southampton; 123,000 Poles over the age of 16 live in London with 398,000 in other parts of the UK.
Now, I know many people from other parts of the EU returned to their home countries when the recession kicked in and we have not returned to the figures of 2007, but it does suggest there is something that enables such migrants to get work in the UK. It may be that they are cheap labour, but even then 16 year olds have always tended to be cheaper to employ. One clear thing is that the migrants have the confidence to get up and come into the UK and find work in a language which is not their own. How many British 18-year olds or even 21-year olds with a degree in their backpack do that? A key challenge is that they do not speak the language, another is that often they have not ever been in another country, these days, not even on holiday let alone to study. It seems ironic that the Conservatives (and New Labour who are/were minimally different to them) with their occasional forays into attempts at discrimination, are in fact further reinforcing the conditions that hamstring British young people. They have pandered to the tabloid media which have hyped up the fear that a child out of your sight is being abused by a paedophile. They have allowed companies to distort the distribution of profits so whilst bosses' salaries have rocketed the real incomes of 90% of employees have continued to slump unabated. Thus, they have engineered and are sustaining a situation in which a 14-year old from France or Spain or even China is getting the intellectual and personal skills to find work across the world and yet their British counterpart is closeted at home learning nothing beyond the distance between their home and the park. Thus, when I see another coach disgorging a fifty or so teenagers ready for some weeks of language school, I do feel depressed knowing that if I was in one of the other capitals of Europe I would not be witnessing the equivalent with British students.
Monday, 10 January 2011
Things I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18
A few months back on the BBC website I came across an inteview with sociology professor Fred Furedi about five things he had felt he had learnt during his life (he is 63). His five were: 1. Listen - because you can learn from anybody; 2. Question everything; 3. Rely on your intuition; 4. Always reflect on your motives when you are dealing with your children and 5. Things are never as bad as they seem. Two things struck me about this. First I was interested that almost all the points were completely the opposite to his (with point 4. I am only occasionally a pseudo-parent so cannot really engage with that point) and second it reminded me of a similar column I used to see in one of the Sunday newspaper magazines when I did a paper-round in the early 1980s which was entitled as I have entitled this posting.
I am not as old as Furedi, but I have experienced quite a bit of life. I know that I came from a privileged background: my parents never divorced; we lived in the same house all through my youth; we lived in a middle class town in southern England not hit by unemployment and social problems as much of England was; I was not sexually abused (though I was physically bullied by peers and constantly humiliated by my parents who portrayed me as looking like someone mentally disabled); I had friends (though fewer than I realised); I had a room of my own to sleep in; I was well fed but not obese and when I went to bed it was not wet or cold. I must say, however, that I have been incredibly disappointed with my life. If I had written this posting some months or years ago, I might be more positive, but facing losing my house and having no work for months is clearly going to alter my view of things and make a lot of what I have done in recent years seem entirely wasted.
I will start with Furedi's five points and then add some of my own. In terms of listening, I agree up to a point, but the more I have heard the more I have heard the same. I have been struck by how small minded and bigoted the average person is. I have lost count of how many times I have been told that the problems of the country are down to immigrants with absolutely no evidence. Such things are repeated so often that they are no longer challenged. The same with stuff around the Thatcherite agenda, such as deregulation and privatisation; that large numbers of people are defrauding the state and millions are getting more than their fair share. I am sick of this stuff being repeated to me as if it is acceptable and beyond challenging. I do not know how I would have reacted if at 18 I would have known this, I guess I would have terminated conversations with many people much sooner, simply walked away. It would be better to be thought peculiar than to listen to hours and hours of this rubbish which I must have heard in my life, simply wasting time I could have spent reading a book.
In terms of Furedi's question everything, I think there is no point. I thought this was the case when I was a child, but I think I was misled by the lingering radical lecturers at my university who had been students in the 1960s and had not thrown off such attitudes even with their prosperity and success (more likely because of them). Basically, unless you are a member of the ultra-rich in our society, you are never going to be able to change anything. There is no point questioning what happens. Often it will be unfair and irrational, but whether it is how your company does things or how you are taught or how the country is run, you are in a position which means you can do absolutely nothing about it. Even if you question it, the answer will usually be irrational and refer to habit or tradition and you cannot break that down. This particularly applies in the workplace. Most offices, factories, warehouses, shops, etc. have methods which are wasteful in terms of time and resources but never try to challenge these and suggest a better way, it will simply cause you to be complained about as a troublemaker or naive and certainly not being wortwhile employing. An episode of the US series 'Malcolm in the Middle' (2000-06 in USA). Teenager Malcolm gets a job working in a warehouse where his mother works. He is charged with squashing up empty cardboard boxes and then taking them to the refuse. The pattern is that the boxes are loaded into a lift taken down a floor, taken into the box-squashing area, squashed, loaded back into the lift, taken back up a floor and then to the refuse container. To speed things up Malcolm squashes them on the floor they start off on and then takes them over to the refuse container, so saving time and electricity. He receives an official report against him for not complying to procedure. This kind of thing happens in every warehouse in the UK and in every office or shop or factory there is similar behaviour, but unless you want to lose your job do not challenge it. In terms of wrongs in our world, complain about things, shout and protest about how wrong they are, but do not waste your effort questioning most things as you simply irritate people and generally they can give you no answer which makes any sense. Save your effort.
Intuition is useless, you might as well toss a coin or throw a dice to decide the step to take in any situation. Even when you have lived life it is impossible to know enough to make a judgement that will save you from harm or discomfort. The best you can do is learn as much as you can about a situation and at least dodge some but certainly not all of the unpleasant consequences, e.g. use a condom when having sex should spare you from a pregnancy developing or getting a STI, but you are unlikely to avoid your partner's ex-boyfriend/girlfriend attacking you jealously, unless you have researched your partner's background and choose a different location or time to have sex with the person. Intuition is far too often affected by superstition and prejudice and so often blinds you to the full range of options and in fact can channel you down fixed, bad paths and leave you with no alternatives that you might otherwise have seen.
As I say I cannot comment on dealing with 'my' children. I certainly think it is worthwhile checking your motives when engaging with anyone not on any moral basis but because it will allow you to see why you are truly doing something and whether that motivation is liable to alter or more likely flag as time passes. A clear example is joining a club or activity because you know someone you are attracted to is a member/participant. That is a bad motive. The likely outcome is that you will be stuck doing something you do not enjoy and they will not be interested in you anyway. You will endure doing something you do not like and wasting time that could be spent on more enjoyable things for you. I am not saying just be a hedonist, but that your focus should be on the central activity not ulterior motives or possible by-products of doing that thing.
Things are always far worse than they seem. As I grow older I adhere to the phrase 'it is later than you think', as used in a religious context, i.e. you must change your life and seek salvation as soon as possible because you are going to be judged sooner than you believe. I do not see it in that particular way, but I think it is a good attitude when thinking about your life. Often minor things happen, such as something goes wrong with your car or your house or there is trouble in your workplace. Too many people, myself included, think, 'it is only minor, I have time to get it sorted'. No, not only is it already too late when the problem becomes apparent, it is going to get worse, because one problem triggers a whole series. You will find the repair to the car costs more than you think so you have less money or you get to work late and steps begin to remove you from your job. In the current economic climate, no job is safe, even teachers and nurses could lose their jobs very quickly. You constantly need to be looking ahead for potential problems. You constantly need to be saving what you can to prepare for the dire situations that come up in your life. Even then you have to recognise you cannot foresee everything and will get caught out unexpectedly. Unfortunately there is nothing that you can do about that, it is part of life. I know now that when I was teenager I was not cautious enough and rather than think I could survive in the business I dreamt of going into, I should have trained as an accountant or a lawyer and right throughout my life I would have avoided things like living in an unheated room above a chipshop sharing a bathroom with seven other people and losing the house I bought now. Always be prepared for the worst that you can imagine, because, in reality, life will be even worse than that. Anyone who tries to follow dreams, especially in their careers, will suffer badly. Find the most secure occupation you can and cling to it; keep retraining constantly to widen your options and even then be prepared for not getting even a fraction of what you want.
Moving on from Furedi's points there are a few others of my own. The first is that most people quickly forget when you have said something in passing that upset them. I often believed I had offended people by what I had said and worried about it greatly and assumed they would hold a grudge against me. Perhaps this stemmed from childhood experiences when people in my district constantly referred to mistakes of the past. I was once at a party and turned down a dessert saying I was not allowed by my parents to have 'packet food' (I had assumed wrongly that it was 'Angel Delight' a very popular, very sweet dessert in a packet of the time) as they were into self-sufficiency and homegrown stuff at the time, the mid-1970s. This offended my friend's mother who had put a lot of effort into the dessert. Running into the woman more than 12 years later she immediately challenged me on what I had said at the age of 8 and was clearly still unhappy about it. However, as life has gone on, I have found that people generally forget faux pas and inadvertently insulting comments incredibly quickly. Not everyone, of course, but the bulk. I do have a concern that in the age of social networking, we are all now experiencing longer duration of anger at such faux pas. I blame this on the hyper-emotionalism being brought from the USA to the UK in which all friendships have to be the greatest ever with constant contact and all groups gather and fall apart like girls in a US high school playground with snubs seem as some heinous insult, even simply not acknowledging immediately or daily is seen in this way. Such attitudes, spill into the workplace. Thus, at 18, I wish I knew that most people do not take faux pas to heart and let them fester for days let alone years, but at 42, I would warn myself that perhaps my childhood experiences are more mainstream now.
People do not want the truth they want a quick answer. Being interested in many topics it took me many years to learn that even if people ask you a complex question they want a quick, simple answer with no context. I have to rein myself in sharply these days because somehow a lengthy answer is now taken as 'improper' especially in the workplace where it seems to be insulting to the 'time poor' staff. You have to keep thorough answers to your diary or your blog, most people want nothing lasting more than 3 sentences, you have to stick to simple concepts, generally engaging their prejudices, whether you are emailing or speaking to them. Challenging someone's view of something unless done very subtly is seen as an insult. At 18 I loved the complexity of ideas and events and assumed everyone else did and wanted to discuss them: they do not and will become irritated, even insulted, if you try.
Women do not like to have sex with virgins. I was never very successful with women, but realise that at 18 I should have been far less picky and simply have had sex with any woman who offered it. As a man, if you have not had sex by the time you are 21 then it is unlikely you ever will have sex. Women, no matter what their age, do not want to be a man's 'first'. The woman who was mine was incredibly angry when she found out and ended the relationship as she weirdly thought I would somehow be obsessed with her. Given her attitude I was clearly quite happy to be rid of her. Women expect a man to know precisely what he is doing, not matter how young he is. You need to read up as much as you can, get to know all the current jargon and never, ever admit to your first partner that she was the first, not even years later, because even then she will turn strange and may spurn you, even if you have had lots of sex with her by then. After 21, women will guess that you are a virgin anyway, it seems impossible to hide. So, whilst taking precautions, I certainly recommend all men, who want to have sex in their 20s and beyond, having sex with a woman before they turn 21 otherwise your chances of ever having it drop to almost zero.
Women are very complex anyway and the input of all the media means they are often not making decisions for themselves but making decisions selected by others. On one hand I wish I knew at 18 that some women will be gravely offended if you even dare to ask them out and you must be ready for how cutting they will be and how indignant that you dare ask. Conversely, I would say, it is amazing who women will be attracted to and you may feel that you are incredibly gawky and ugly but there is at least one, if not many more women you will meet who would at least like to sleep with you and perhaps have a long-term relationship. Certainly if a woman asks you out, it is usually genuine. I often thought I was being played with, but with hindsight, I see that whilst some women might want you simply to get them pregnant, the vast majority simply would not bother asking you if they did not feel that there was something good about being with you even short-term. I was always chasing women who had no interest in me and never knew how to handle those who actually had asked me out, thinking it had to be some kind of trick. In this still too heavily male-focused society, any woman who has made the effort to ask you out is worth going out with. The vast bulk of women of your age have no interest in you, so one who expresses an interest is to be treasured. The other thing I would say to my 18-year old self, is that the most unexpected girlfriends are often the most successful ones. We all have an ideal, but actually real happiness is found in the least expected place, in terms of a woman's interests, appearance, nationality, background, even age. If you really want happiness have an open mind.
Do not reveal anything much about yourself to work colleagues, it will be used against you. Never tell anyone if you are married or single or who your parents or siblings are or where you used to work, even where you holiday or what books or movies or food you like. All of these things will be taken and used by someone in your workplace to disadvantage you. Do not have family pictures on your desk or talk about your wife or parents, keep all of this secret. If you have to, fabricate a life that fits with your colleagues' prejudices about what a 'normal' person of your age and position has. Obviously, I would advise anyone to keep details available online about them to a minimum.
One thing I am glad I did adhere to when 18 is not to disrespect anyone, even if you disagree with their views, they are worthy of respect as being humans. Certainly if you run into a dictator or a torturer challenge them as far as you can (without endangering yourself or others), but almost all people you meet in normal life think they are doing right and are doing it for worthwhile motives. Even if what they are doing is wrong, do not lower yourself to become like them. You are unlikely to change them by disparaging them, but your mean-spiritedness is going to put other people who could be your allies, off you. As far as possible avoid unpleasant people and console yourself that they will pay a price whether you believe as a result of karma, being judged in the afterlife or by being left friendless because of their behaviour.
I would tell my 18-year old to go and visit more people. Even if it means lengthy journeys, actually visiting friends is a rare commodity which will become rarer as you get older and you will look back at missed opportunities to spend time with friends. It is important for your wellbeing to get out and see people. There will be ample time for sitting at home in the future. Travelling with people is a whole much harder thing, far more difficult than you could ever imagine and only worthwhile doing with individuals who can tolerate their life while travelling to be entirely different to everything they had at home, even if going camping in the UK or to a hotel in France, and who do not get frustrated when things turn out differently to what is expected. Do not plan too much, people jam holidays full of stuff, just absorbing the place is often enough, do not try to adhere to a rigid, packed itinerary, it will simply raise the chances for frustration and problems. Enjoying being away from home and with friends and family should be a far greater priority than seeing or doing everything you had considered doing. Only travel with sexual partners if married to them, no other set-up will stand a holiday. It is better for you to have short breaks and to holiday separately with same-sex friends or family until you have effectively become family to each other. So many good relationships are broken by holidays and I am far from being the only person to note this.
In terms of myself at 18 in terms of travel, I would see be less afraid than your mother about me travelling to places. I miss out a great deal in 1989 by not seeing the Berlin Wall before it fell and in 1995 in not going to Prague and Budapest, for fear that I would be robbed or not find someone to stay. My holidays cycling in France would have been better if I had not been terrified of not finding anything to eat on a Sunday. Whilst caution while travelling is sensible, fear actually reduces the experience and means it fails what the basic principle is of travelling, which is to have fun. I certainly wish I had had the courage to do things at university such as 'rag hitch hike' and gone on more random trips because succeeding at them would have built up my courage to travel more.
Another personal thing which would not be broadly applicable, would be to tell my 18-year old self not to be deluded into thinking that I could learn foreign languages or learn any martial art. I wasted a lot of time and money doing both, ultimately for absolutely no personal gain, and, a long the way a lot of stress and disappointment. Despite what you are told by the people wanting to market their courses or their club, not everyone can achieve success in these areas. It is certain I am an utter failure at trying to grasp foreign languages or do a martial art and yet I continued to delude myself that 'this time it will be different', it never has been. Finally giving up on Mandarin for the second time two years ago and chucking in fencing back in 2005 were long overdue admissions that I would never be good at not only these specifics but at these things in general. When I was younger I wondered if I should not have taken up the chance to study Japanese in Japan, but now know that was the correct decision. I certainly should not have gone to live in West Germany in 1989 as my grasp of the language was just as bad when I came back as when I went and all the good things I experienced there I could have experienced just as well as a tourist.
I would tell my 18-year old self that I would never be published. Though it was not as severe a situation then as now, I should have realised that there was never any chance that anyone would pay any attention to what I had written to want to publish it. There are tens of thousands of full-length books being written in the UK now and the vast majority of these will never be published. Before wordprocessors were common they were probably fewer in number, but certainly I wasted a lot of my life writing and editing stuff that no-one beyond myself is ever going to read and it is clear it will never be published. It was a massive delusion on my part and I should have spent my time doing something else and saving my cash. People do not get published because they have an ability to write good work, just look at the quantity of appalling books. They get published either because of luck or most commonly because of who they know.
One thing that I would have told my 18-year old self to do is to attend more public appearances by people, particularly politicians, historians, scientists and authors. I often could not stir myself to go to these things, but I severely regret that now. Despite our television, and now internet age, there is nothing like actually being in a room with someone you admire or, conversely, strongly disagree with and I wish I had taken up far more of the opportunities that were presented to me to do this.
I would also tell my 18-year old self that whilst hard work is vital, it never guarantees anything. Working until 9 p.m. most evenings of the week studying in the library does not get you a 1st class degree. If I had stopped at 5 p.m., I probably would have still got a 2.1, but been able to do more of the things above. I certainly warn my 18-year old self at 21 not to take the advice of what turned out to be a very foolish lecturer, and take time every day to read the newspaper. Following that suggestion in my final year at university caused immense difficulties. I lost hours of time which I should have been spending on my work, for absolutely no personal gain. I knew more about day-to-day events of those months but they have given me no benefit then or since.
Anyway, these are the things that I wish I had known at 18. I am a person who, when anything goes wrong, always analyses how better it might have turned out if I had made different choices. In most cases, living in the UK in the times I have done, there is little change I could have made. Getting some slightly different jobs would have made a huge difference, but if this recent glut of interviews has shown me, I have minimal control over which job I get, and the same applies for where I have lived, too often it has been Hobson's Choice. However, if I had been able to get these thoughts back to my 18-year old self, I think a lot of the time between the difficult times would have been a lot happier and certainly satisfying than it turned out to be. I think this is because unlike, perhaps Fred Furedi, there are very few parts of my life that if I had the chance to change them in some way, I would want to leave them just as I experienced them.
I am not as old as Furedi, but I have experienced quite a bit of life. I know that I came from a privileged background: my parents never divorced; we lived in the same house all through my youth; we lived in a middle class town in southern England not hit by unemployment and social problems as much of England was; I was not sexually abused (though I was physically bullied by peers and constantly humiliated by my parents who portrayed me as looking like someone mentally disabled); I had friends (though fewer than I realised); I had a room of my own to sleep in; I was well fed but not obese and when I went to bed it was not wet or cold. I must say, however, that I have been incredibly disappointed with my life. If I had written this posting some months or years ago, I might be more positive, but facing losing my house and having no work for months is clearly going to alter my view of things and make a lot of what I have done in recent years seem entirely wasted.
I will start with Furedi's five points and then add some of my own. In terms of listening, I agree up to a point, but the more I have heard the more I have heard the same. I have been struck by how small minded and bigoted the average person is. I have lost count of how many times I have been told that the problems of the country are down to immigrants with absolutely no evidence. Such things are repeated so often that they are no longer challenged. The same with stuff around the Thatcherite agenda, such as deregulation and privatisation; that large numbers of people are defrauding the state and millions are getting more than their fair share. I am sick of this stuff being repeated to me as if it is acceptable and beyond challenging. I do not know how I would have reacted if at 18 I would have known this, I guess I would have terminated conversations with many people much sooner, simply walked away. It would be better to be thought peculiar than to listen to hours and hours of this rubbish which I must have heard in my life, simply wasting time I could have spent reading a book.
In terms of Furedi's question everything, I think there is no point. I thought this was the case when I was a child, but I think I was misled by the lingering radical lecturers at my university who had been students in the 1960s and had not thrown off such attitudes even with their prosperity and success (more likely because of them). Basically, unless you are a member of the ultra-rich in our society, you are never going to be able to change anything. There is no point questioning what happens. Often it will be unfair and irrational, but whether it is how your company does things or how you are taught or how the country is run, you are in a position which means you can do absolutely nothing about it. Even if you question it, the answer will usually be irrational and refer to habit or tradition and you cannot break that down. This particularly applies in the workplace. Most offices, factories, warehouses, shops, etc. have methods which are wasteful in terms of time and resources but never try to challenge these and suggest a better way, it will simply cause you to be complained about as a troublemaker or naive and certainly not being wortwhile employing. An episode of the US series 'Malcolm in the Middle' (2000-06 in USA). Teenager Malcolm gets a job working in a warehouse where his mother works. He is charged with squashing up empty cardboard boxes and then taking them to the refuse. The pattern is that the boxes are loaded into a lift taken down a floor, taken into the box-squashing area, squashed, loaded back into the lift, taken back up a floor and then to the refuse container. To speed things up Malcolm squashes them on the floor they start off on and then takes them over to the refuse container, so saving time and electricity. He receives an official report against him for not complying to procedure. This kind of thing happens in every warehouse in the UK and in every office or shop or factory there is similar behaviour, but unless you want to lose your job do not challenge it. In terms of wrongs in our world, complain about things, shout and protest about how wrong they are, but do not waste your effort questioning most things as you simply irritate people and generally they can give you no answer which makes any sense. Save your effort.
Intuition is useless, you might as well toss a coin or throw a dice to decide the step to take in any situation. Even when you have lived life it is impossible to know enough to make a judgement that will save you from harm or discomfort. The best you can do is learn as much as you can about a situation and at least dodge some but certainly not all of the unpleasant consequences, e.g. use a condom when having sex should spare you from a pregnancy developing or getting a STI, but you are unlikely to avoid your partner's ex-boyfriend/girlfriend attacking you jealously, unless you have researched your partner's background and choose a different location or time to have sex with the person. Intuition is far too often affected by superstition and prejudice and so often blinds you to the full range of options and in fact can channel you down fixed, bad paths and leave you with no alternatives that you might otherwise have seen.
As I say I cannot comment on dealing with 'my' children. I certainly think it is worthwhile checking your motives when engaging with anyone not on any moral basis but because it will allow you to see why you are truly doing something and whether that motivation is liable to alter or more likely flag as time passes. A clear example is joining a club or activity because you know someone you are attracted to is a member/participant. That is a bad motive. The likely outcome is that you will be stuck doing something you do not enjoy and they will not be interested in you anyway. You will endure doing something you do not like and wasting time that could be spent on more enjoyable things for you. I am not saying just be a hedonist, but that your focus should be on the central activity not ulterior motives or possible by-products of doing that thing.
Things are always far worse than they seem. As I grow older I adhere to the phrase 'it is later than you think', as used in a religious context, i.e. you must change your life and seek salvation as soon as possible because you are going to be judged sooner than you believe. I do not see it in that particular way, but I think it is a good attitude when thinking about your life. Often minor things happen, such as something goes wrong with your car or your house or there is trouble in your workplace. Too many people, myself included, think, 'it is only minor, I have time to get it sorted'. No, not only is it already too late when the problem becomes apparent, it is going to get worse, because one problem triggers a whole series. You will find the repair to the car costs more than you think so you have less money or you get to work late and steps begin to remove you from your job. In the current economic climate, no job is safe, even teachers and nurses could lose their jobs very quickly. You constantly need to be looking ahead for potential problems. You constantly need to be saving what you can to prepare for the dire situations that come up in your life. Even then you have to recognise you cannot foresee everything and will get caught out unexpectedly. Unfortunately there is nothing that you can do about that, it is part of life. I know now that when I was teenager I was not cautious enough and rather than think I could survive in the business I dreamt of going into, I should have trained as an accountant or a lawyer and right throughout my life I would have avoided things like living in an unheated room above a chipshop sharing a bathroom with seven other people and losing the house I bought now. Always be prepared for the worst that you can imagine, because, in reality, life will be even worse than that. Anyone who tries to follow dreams, especially in their careers, will suffer badly. Find the most secure occupation you can and cling to it; keep retraining constantly to widen your options and even then be prepared for not getting even a fraction of what you want.
Moving on from Furedi's points there are a few others of my own. The first is that most people quickly forget when you have said something in passing that upset them. I often believed I had offended people by what I had said and worried about it greatly and assumed they would hold a grudge against me. Perhaps this stemmed from childhood experiences when people in my district constantly referred to mistakes of the past. I was once at a party and turned down a dessert saying I was not allowed by my parents to have 'packet food' (I had assumed wrongly that it was 'Angel Delight' a very popular, very sweet dessert in a packet of the time) as they were into self-sufficiency and homegrown stuff at the time, the mid-1970s. This offended my friend's mother who had put a lot of effort into the dessert. Running into the woman more than 12 years later she immediately challenged me on what I had said at the age of 8 and was clearly still unhappy about it. However, as life has gone on, I have found that people generally forget faux pas and inadvertently insulting comments incredibly quickly. Not everyone, of course, but the bulk. I do have a concern that in the age of social networking, we are all now experiencing longer duration of anger at such faux pas. I blame this on the hyper-emotionalism being brought from the USA to the UK in which all friendships have to be the greatest ever with constant contact and all groups gather and fall apart like girls in a US high school playground with snubs seem as some heinous insult, even simply not acknowledging immediately or daily is seen in this way. Such attitudes, spill into the workplace. Thus, at 18, I wish I knew that most people do not take faux pas to heart and let them fester for days let alone years, but at 42, I would warn myself that perhaps my childhood experiences are more mainstream now.
People do not want the truth they want a quick answer. Being interested in many topics it took me many years to learn that even if people ask you a complex question they want a quick, simple answer with no context. I have to rein myself in sharply these days because somehow a lengthy answer is now taken as 'improper' especially in the workplace where it seems to be insulting to the 'time poor' staff. You have to keep thorough answers to your diary or your blog, most people want nothing lasting more than 3 sentences, you have to stick to simple concepts, generally engaging their prejudices, whether you are emailing or speaking to them. Challenging someone's view of something unless done very subtly is seen as an insult. At 18 I loved the complexity of ideas and events and assumed everyone else did and wanted to discuss them: they do not and will become irritated, even insulted, if you try.
Women do not like to have sex with virgins. I was never very successful with women, but realise that at 18 I should have been far less picky and simply have had sex with any woman who offered it. As a man, if you have not had sex by the time you are 21 then it is unlikely you ever will have sex. Women, no matter what their age, do not want to be a man's 'first'. The woman who was mine was incredibly angry when she found out and ended the relationship as she weirdly thought I would somehow be obsessed with her. Given her attitude I was clearly quite happy to be rid of her. Women expect a man to know precisely what he is doing, not matter how young he is. You need to read up as much as you can, get to know all the current jargon and never, ever admit to your first partner that she was the first, not even years later, because even then she will turn strange and may spurn you, even if you have had lots of sex with her by then. After 21, women will guess that you are a virgin anyway, it seems impossible to hide. So, whilst taking precautions, I certainly recommend all men, who want to have sex in their 20s and beyond, having sex with a woman before they turn 21 otherwise your chances of ever having it drop to almost zero.
Women are very complex anyway and the input of all the media means they are often not making decisions for themselves but making decisions selected by others. On one hand I wish I knew at 18 that some women will be gravely offended if you even dare to ask them out and you must be ready for how cutting they will be and how indignant that you dare ask. Conversely, I would say, it is amazing who women will be attracted to and you may feel that you are incredibly gawky and ugly but there is at least one, if not many more women you will meet who would at least like to sleep with you and perhaps have a long-term relationship. Certainly if a woman asks you out, it is usually genuine. I often thought I was being played with, but with hindsight, I see that whilst some women might want you simply to get them pregnant, the vast majority simply would not bother asking you if they did not feel that there was something good about being with you even short-term. I was always chasing women who had no interest in me and never knew how to handle those who actually had asked me out, thinking it had to be some kind of trick. In this still too heavily male-focused society, any woman who has made the effort to ask you out is worth going out with. The vast bulk of women of your age have no interest in you, so one who expresses an interest is to be treasured. The other thing I would say to my 18-year old self, is that the most unexpected girlfriends are often the most successful ones. We all have an ideal, but actually real happiness is found in the least expected place, in terms of a woman's interests, appearance, nationality, background, even age. If you really want happiness have an open mind.
Do not reveal anything much about yourself to work colleagues, it will be used against you. Never tell anyone if you are married or single or who your parents or siblings are or where you used to work, even where you holiday or what books or movies or food you like. All of these things will be taken and used by someone in your workplace to disadvantage you. Do not have family pictures on your desk or talk about your wife or parents, keep all of this secret. If you have to, fabricate a life that fits with your colleagues' prejudices about what a 'normal' person of your age and position has. Obviously, I would advise anyone to keep details available online about them to a minimum.
One thing I am glad I did adhere to when 18 is not to disrespect anyone, even if you disagree with their views, they are worthy of respect as being humans. Certainly if you run into a dictator or a torturer challenge them as far as you can (without endangering yourself or others), but almost all people you meet in normal life think they are doing right and are doing it for worthwhile motives. Even if what they are doing is wrong, do not lower yourself to become like them. You are unlikely to change them by disparaging them, but your mean-spiritedness is going to put other people who could be your allies, off you. As far as possible avoid unpleasant people and console yourself that they will pay a price whether you believe as a result of karma, being judged in the afterlife or by being left friendless because of their behaviour.
I would tell my 18-year old to go and visit more people. Even if it means lengthy journeys, actually visiting friends is a rare commodity which will become rarer as you get older and you will look back at missed opportunities to spend time with friends. It is important for your wellbeing to get out and see people. There will be ample time for sitting at home in the future. Travelling with people is a whole much harder thing, far more difficult than you could ever imagine and only worthwhile doing with individuals who can tolerate their life while travelling to be entirely different to everything they had at home, even if going camping in the UK or to a hotel in France, and who do not get frustrated when things turn out differently to what is expected. Do not plan too much, people jam holidays full of stuff, just absorbing the place is often enough, do not try to adhere to a rigid, packed itinerary, it will simply raise the chances for frustration and problems. Enjoying being away from home and with friends and family should be a far greater priority than seeing or doing everything you had considered doing. Only travel with sexual partners if married to them, no other set-up will stand a holiday. It is better for you to have short breaks and to holiday separately with same-sex friends or family until you have effectively become family to each other. So many good relationships are broken by holidays and I am far from being the only person to note this.
In terms of myself at 18 in terms of travel, I would see be less afraid than your mother about me travelling to places. I miss out a great deal in 1989 by not seeing the Berlin Wall before it fell and in 1995 in not going to Prague and Budapest, for fear that I would be robbed or not find someone to stay. My holidays cycling in France would have been better if I had not been terrified of not finding anything to eat on a Sunday. Whilst caution while travelling is sensible, fear actually reduces the experience and means it fails what the basic principle is of travelling, which is to have fun. I certainly wish I had had the courage to do things at university such as 'rag hitch hike' and gone on more random trips because succeeding at them would have built up my courage to travel more.
Another personal thing which would not be broadly applicable, would be to tell my 18-year old self not to be deluded into thinking that I could learn foreign languages or learn any martial art. I wasted a lot of time and money doing both, ultimately for absolutely no personal gain, and, a long the way a lot of stress and disappointment. Despite what you are told by the people wanting to market their courses or their club, not everyone can achieve success in these areas. It is certain I am an utter failure at trying to grasp foreign languages or do a martial art and yet I continued to delude myself that 'this time it will be different', it never has been. Finally giving up on Mandarin for the second time two years ago and chucking in fencing back in 2005 were long overdue admissions that I would never be good at not only these specifics but at these things in general. When I was younger I wondered if I should not have taken up the chance to study Japanese in Japan, but now know that was the correct decision. I certainly should not have gone to live in West Germany in 1989 as my grasp of the language was just as bad when I came back as when I went and all the good things I experienced there I could have experienced just as well as a tourist.
I would tell my 18-year old self that I would never be published. Though it was not as severe a situation then as now, I should have realised that there was never any chance that anyone would pay any attention to what I had written to want to publish it. There are tens of thousands of full-length books being written in the UK now and the vast majority of these will never be published. Before wordprocessors were common they were probably fewer in number, but certainly I wasted a lot of my life writing and editing stuff that no-one beyond myself is ever going to read and it is clear it will never be published. It was a massive delusion on my part and I should have spent my time doing something else and saving my cash. People do not get published because they have an ability to write good work, just look at the quantity of appalling books. They get published either because of luck or most commonly because of who they know.
One thing that I would have told my 18-year old self to do is to attend more public appearances by people, particularly politicians, historians, scientists and authors. I often could not stir myself to go to these things, but I severely regret that now. Despite our television, and now internet age, there is nothing like actually being in a room with someone you admire or, conversely, strongly disagree with and I wish I had taken up far more of the opportunities that were presented to me to do this.
I would also tell my 18-year old self that whilst hard work is vital, it never guarantees anything. Working until 9 p.m. most evenings of the week studying in the library does not get you a 1st class degree. If I had stopped at 5 p.m., I probably would have still got a 2.1, but been able to do more of the things above. I certainly warn my 18-year old self at 21 not to take the advice of what turned out to be a very foolish lecturer, and take time every day to read the newspaper. Following that suggestion in my final year at university caused immense difficulties. I lost hours of time which I should have been spending on my work, for absolutely no personal gain. I knew more about day-to-day events of those months but they have given me no benefit then or since.
Anyway, these are the things that I wish I had known at 18. I am a person who, when anything goes wrong, always analyses how better it might have turned out if I had made different choices. In most cases, living in the UK in the times I have done, there is little change I could have made. Getting some slightly different jobs would have made a huge difference, but if this recent glut of interviews has shown me, I have minimal control over which job I get, and the same applies for where I have lived, too often it has been Hobson's Choice. However, if I had been able to get these thoughts back to my 18-year old self, I think a lot of the time between the difficult times would have been a lot happier and certainly satisfying than it turned out to be. I think this is because unlike, perhaps Fred Furedi, there are very few parts of my life that if I had the chance to change them in some way, I would want to leave them just as I experienced them.
Sunday, 7 November 2010
The University Market
Back before the election in May 2010, I commented how it appeared that the Conservative Party had very little stated policy. Wrongly I thought that this was because basically they were not far in policy terms from the Labour Party, especially in its Blair Party incarnation up to 2008. I was wrong in this. It is now clear that the Conservatives were planning an extreme New Right version of Thatcherism and knew that if they were open about that fact it would lose them votes. Given that they did not win a majority anyway, in terms of electoral strategy they were right in terms of making electoral gains to keep quiet about their real intentions. What I, and other commentators tended to overlook, was that there was policy out there being stated not only in the right-wing media but even in more liberal output. None of the speculations were as harsh as the policy that has in fact been introduced, but if you look back at what was being discussed while Gordon Brown was prime minister, you see the desires of commentators, and, by implication, influential people behind them, that encouraged the kind of policies were are now seeing enacted.
Two trends I did pick up on and comment on, though did not really understand how they would form the basis of future government policy, certainly in the way we have seen it were: the desire for the return of the 'whip of unemployment' - http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/09/cracking-whip-of-unemployment.html and also the desire to have a far greater demarcation in university education, so that the privileges the already privileged are gaining were not lost among the fact that more people from ordinary backgrounds were getting degrees - http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/02/uk-universities-snobbery-and-decay.html That second posting was prompted by comments in 'The Guardian' which though it gave its support to the Liberal Democrats during the election was hardly a supporter of the harsh monetarist, small state policies that the coaliton involving the Liberal Democrats has introduced.
Universities have always been a challenging issue for political parties. Higher education until the 1990s remained the preserve of an elite, with in the 1980s, only 6% of 18-year olds getting to it. Before 1992 there were two classes in higher education: universities which were funded by the central state and polytechnics, in the UK more vocationally focused and funded by local authorities; these were seen as 'second class' despite the good courses many of them ran, many of which contributed far more to the economy than university degrees. Even with this small percentage with the population rise and the desire to cut public spending the grants to students were reduced and removed and loans were introduced in 1990, though at this stage they were not to pay fees which were still paid for by the state, they were to give money to live on. Universities were expanding but not at a massive rate and so generally could balance income and expenditure.
In 1992 polytechnics and many other institutions were allowed to become 'new' universities. This upset many people (it still does) who felt that the elitist nature of universities was being watered down. Coming from a smaller scale, more industry-focused background many former polytechnics were actually better equipped to deal with the growing 'market place' of higher education than the more established universities that had been used to students automatically turning up. Many of the new universities moved quickly into research which is what had distinguished universities previously, and in certain areas became very leading in this respect. However, they were more alert to the fact that the students were effectively their 'customers' and whilst they may have had less space than universities they actually paid attention to what students wanted in a way that the older universities had often been neglectful of.
The big change came in 1997 with the government of Tony Blair coming to power with the slogan 'Education, education. education'. The goal of that government was that 50% of 18-year olds would go to university. One driver for this was how low our level of graduates was compared to other states in the EU and competitors across the world. The high level of pupils leaving school with no qualifications was another factor but received less attention. The post-1992 universities had grown and now grew even faster as many of the students from 'non-traditional' backgrounds often went to their local university and on to courses that could offer them a better chance of a job than studying English at a traditional university. The increase was incredible and I now find that universities that friends of mine went to in the 1980s now take four or five times as many students than they did 25 years ago, though often jammed into much the same space. Expanding universities so quickly, with all the new demands for computer facilities and students not tolerating the kind of accommodation we put up with, meant that universities found it hard to sustain the growth. It seems most of it was funded not through taking more UK students (or even students from elsewhere in the EU who by law could not be charged more than British students) but taking students from Asia and to a lesser extent the Americas and Africa. The big supplier of students is China. Students from outside the EU pay fees three times higher than what English students pay. Here it is important to note 'English' students because when tuition fees were introduced for students in 2006/7 they did not come to Scotland for Scottish students studying there and there were reduced rates in Wales and Northern Ireland, already a differentiated 'market' was appearing.
The market in 'international students' as they are called is not infinite and with China building more universities and other EU universities teaching courses in English, plus continued competition from the USA and Australia, only briefly dented by their difficulty with foreigners following the 11th September 2001 attacks, UK universities can no longer rely on these students as a 'cash cow'. Also these students only want to study particular courses, especially in business rather than the full extent of the curriculum. Talking to one lecturer they said that on some business and management courses the classes are 90-95% Chinese students now. Universities have expanded faster than their revenue base has done. Some have balanced this well, some badly, and, of course, the current sharp cuts in public spending, cutting the grant universities get for teaching by 40%. Apparently from 2012 only science, engineering, mathematics and foreign language degree courses will receive funding, other subject areas will have to generate their own income.
Up until last week universities were limited in what they could charge UK students. This limit has been raised to £9000 (€10,600; US$14,400) per year, i.e. £27,000 for a three year course. Effectively this brings the charge to UK students in line with what international students were charged. In fact some so-called 'premium' courses especially in business have had exemptions and been charging such high fees already for everyone. Students will be loaned this money and will only have to pay it when they start earning £21,000 per year. Given that unemployment of recent graduates is around 25% at present, many of them are not going to be repaying for many years to come. The so-called graduate 'premium' of earning more because you have a degree only really applies to sectors like banking in which most people can become rich. Remember these days that nurses have to have degrees and yet the starting salary for them is just on £21,000, which is around £10,000 lower than the national average salary. Now, with the current fees, most universities charge the maximum, they need the money. However, there is an expectation that with the £9000 some universities will charge less, the implication being that those 'lesser' universities so perceived last year will become cheaper universities; they will attract poorer people to do cheaper courses and leave the 'proper' universities to the wealthy and privileged it is clear that a lot of commentators feel should be the only people to go to university. As Margaret Thatcher said about studying Anglo-Saxon in the 1980s, I believe at the University of Oxford, 'what a luxury'. A 'good' degree from an 'elite' university is now going to become something the wealthy can indulge in. By the back door, the polytechnic segregation has been re-introduced.
We cannot avoid the fact that if we want universities as large as we have them now money must come from somewhere. This current government is unwilling to provide it. I favour a graduate tax, but this was ruled out a couple of months ago by the government, one which is averse to anything called a tax. In many ways, however, the tax is effectively a private one as students will pay back the money with 'real' interest rates. Up until August 2010, student loans were repaid at a nominal interest rate, which with recent low rates had actually fallen to a negative interest rate of -0.4% on loans taken out before 1998, which meant that even if you made no repayments your loan decreased. Now, however if you took the loan out before 1998 you pay 4.4% and if later, 1.5% unless the bank base rate rises which if it does the interest rate will rise to a maximum of 4.4%. Before August the rate for these later loans was 0% which meant students just paid back the capital. Now, even before the cap on fees was taken off and even before a more market-orientated interest rate was introduced the average undergraduate was leaving university with debts of £25,000. There is a whole issue about how high rents, food and utilities are in the UK anyway, which obviously contributes a lot of what students spend. Many supplement their state loans with bank loans, at commercial rates of interest. Even if fees had not been permitted to rise, student debt levels would have risen. Student debt has meant that people from social categories 4-7 (i.e. the old working class categories) going to university has not risen at all since 2002, the ongoing rise has been in middle class people and even they now are feeling the squeeze.
The government is saying that universities charging more than £6000 per year on a course must put in steps to assist working class students to attend. In fact they were compelled to do this from when fees were first introduced and most have a sliding scale of help, though this then annoys the middle class students just out of the support band and allegations of parents splitting up so their children can get funding. There is no evidence that since 2002 such assistance has raised working class participation in universities, but perhaps the level has not fallen in the way it would have done if such university grants were in place. One factor that is constantly overlooked is how people are actually averse to getting into such vast debt even if help is offered. This tends to affect people from working class backgrounds more than other social groups and men more than women which is one reason why there are no 6 women studying at UK universities for every 4 men. Knowing that you will have £27,000 of debt just for fees, let alone the debt for living costs which we can estimate is around £16,000 for three years (obviously depending where you are studying, which is why so many students stay at home with their parents now), you are looking at £43,000 of debt, which even on the magic £21,000 is more than two years' salary. With the interest rate of just 1.5% and taking 10 years to clear the debt, just for the fees, you will pay £31,334 by the end, that is a lot to clear in 10 years, so we will most likely see people stretching it out over 25 years like a mortgage (perhaps meaning they cannot get a mortgage as well, taking the best educated people out of the market for buying houses) and this would cost you £39,175. If the rate is 4.4% then it is over £41,000 over 10 years, again, note, just for the fees. It will be very easy for students to rack up more than £100,000 of debt by the time they have paid it off, with even currently very low interest rates.
People are going to be very critical of what they get for their money. I have heard students on public transport pricing up individual lectures, and complaining while the snow was closing roads, that they needed a refund for the lectures cancelled when staff and students could not get in. They will demand courses that will give them jobs. This is what the government want. They want ordinary people only to study a narrow range of vocational courses and places seen as 'cheap' or 'second rate' and leave the rest to the already wealthy. It is clear universities will have to close many humanities subjects let alone things like art and even pure sciences such as astronomy. If there is no clear occupation at the end of the degree it is going to be off the curriculum. In addition, you will find the only people who become researchers in social sciences or astronomers are people from very rich backgrounds, just as was the case in the 18th century, the kind of society it seems apparent David Cameron wants to engineer. Even in the Conservative Party he is turning back the clock from the culture of the days of Heath, Thatcher and Major in which hard working people from ordinary if not poor backgrounds could get on in the party, now you have to already be from the elite.
Some universities, probably led by the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge, will become private. It makes no sense for them to chase after the measly sums the state is giving them, with what they might see as restrictions when they might as well charge their students the same fees and get to have it all on their own terms. Some UK universities are already struggling, in some towns lay offs have been in their hundreds. People do not seem to realise that universities employing 5000 or more people are like large factories and when they close it ripples out through the local economy as expenditure in local shops, on rent and public transport, as well as a cheap supply of labour disappears. Closing a university will take thousands of previously well-off people out of the local economy, plus all the tens of thousands (most universities now have over 20,000 students) of students. I know many towns loathe students but they will miss the money they bring especially during this recession (or is it bad enough yet to call it a depression?)
These institutions will be absorbed by others or private companies or may simply collapse. I imagine we will see mergers and ironically, those post-1992 universities who have had a more robust market model actually buying up parts of more established universities who have had a not as tight an economic model during the boom years. At many universities students from outside the UK will become the majority as they already are in some subjects. As unfunded courses are dropped and the focus is purely on the most profitable, those courses which already attract lots of foreign money will become dominant. UK students will become a minority on many campuses. There will also be lots of redundant academics swilling around in the economy, especially from arts, humanities, social sciences and pure sciences. Given the commercial sector's aversion to anyone from an academic background, it is very likely you will have a lot of unemployable but highly educated people and what they will do as they fall into poverty is an interesting question, especially as the public sector where they might have previously found work also contracts.
I envisage some imaginative students will leave the UK. Apparently the University of Maastricht is happy to take students at equivalent to £1500 per year fees at present and teach them in English (knowing that most British people have no grasp of any language bar their own) and with lower living costs than the UK. British university students are perhaps going to move into the position that Chinese and Indian students have held coming to Europe and the USA in the past. Clever American universities would also tap into this market, if they need to.
In David Cameron's shockingly vigorous drive to make the UK a far more divided and elitist society, universities which, since the 1960s, have been seen as a way for ordinary people to advance themselves, are clearly going to come under attack. The thing is, our competitors are still turning out more graduates than the UK and right across the subject spectrum not just in very limited areas. It seems likely that in the future the government will find it difficult to find any British people qualified to advise it on the economy or social development let alone cultural issues, it will have to rely on Chinese people. Students often stay around the university town they go to, Sheffield in particular has benefited from this. The UK now will be exporting intelligent people to the Netherlands and other EU states many of whom will not come back. I imagine many more will flee the UK to escape the huge debt burden on their heads. As with so much of the current government's policy, this is being done for extreme ideological reasons, to smash meritocracy and return British society to the control of the privileged. All the stuff about the deficit is just a front to cover such ardent ideology.
I lived through a period of growing opportunity, with higher education a core element of that. It is being killed off very quickly. Before the next election we will see a fall in university students, the closure of some universities and a new elite, high-priced band of institutions, some of them private, and even these teaching a far narrower range of subjects than before. Other institutions will be offering what are perceived as second or third rate degrees, still necessary to get a job whilst being disparaged, and coming at a huge financial cost to individuals who as a result will be unable to contribute to the economy. The choice will be to join private business and scrape enough together to buy a house or study and rent for the rest of your life. Both models favour the kind of society that the government wants: one in which landlords and banks make vast profits, even beyond their previous excesses, for the crumbs they provide to ordinary people. It will be a society in which study will be reserved for the rich not the intelligent. This will naturally mean that talent will go abroad and the UK economy will be weak compared to its rivals, but if the city merchant bankers can still make their profits, the government's view is that the rest of us should be humble and grateful for what we can scrape and have no right to protest about the lack of opportunity and penury the rising generation face.
Two trends I did pick up on and comment on, though did not really understand how they would form the basis of future government policy, certainly in the way we have seen it were: the desire for the return of the 'whip of unemployment' - http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/09/cracking-whip-of-unemployment.html and also the desire to have a far greater demarcation in university education, so that the privileges the already privileged are gaining were not lost among the fact that more people from ordinary backgrounds were getting degrees - http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/02/uk-universities-snobbery-and-decay.html That second posting was prompted by comments in 'The Guardian' which though it gave its support to the Liberal Democrats during the election was hardly a supporter of the harsh monetarist, small state policies that the coaliton involving the Liberal Democrats has introduced.
Universities have always been a challenging issue for political parties. Higher education until the 1990s remained the preserve of an elite, with in the 1980s, only 6% of 18-year olds getting to it. Before 1992 there were two classes in higher education: universities which were funded by the central state and polytechnics, in the UK more vocationally focused and funded by local authorities; these were seen as 'second class' despite the good courses many of them ran, many of which contributed far more to the economy than university degrees. Even with this small percentage with the population rise and the desire to cut public spending the grants to students were reduced and removed and loans were introduced in 1990, though at this stage they were not to pay fees which were still paid for by the state, they were to give money to live on. Universities were expanding but not at a massive rate and so generally could balance income and expenditure.
In 1992 polytechnics and many other institutions were allowed to become 'new' universities. This upset many people (it still does) who felt that the elitist nature of universities was being watered down. Coming from a smaller scale, more industry-focused background many former polytechnics were actually better equipped to deal with the growing 'market place' of higher education than the more established universities that had been used to students automatically turning up. Many of the new universities moved quickly into research which is what had distinguished universities previously, and in certain areas became very leading in this respect. However, they were more alert to the fact that the students were effectively their 'customers' and whilst they may have had less space than universities they actually paid attention to what students wanted in a way that the older universities had often been neglectful of.
The big change came in 1997 with the government of Tony Blair coming to power with the slogan 'Education, education. education'. The goal of that government was that 50% of 18-year olds would go to university. One driver for this was how low our level of graduates was compared to other states in the EU and competitors across the world. The high level of pupils leaving school with no qualifications was another factor but received less attention. The post-1992 universities had grown and now grew even faster as many of the students from 'non-traditional' backgrounds often went to their local university and on to courses that could offer them a better chance of a job than studying English at a traditional university. The increase was incredible and I now find that universities that friends of mine went to in the 1980s now take four or five times as many students than they did 25 years ago, though often jammed into much the same space. Expanding universities so quickly, with all the new demands for computer facilities and students not tolerating the kind of accommodation we put up with, meant that universities found it hard to sustain the growth. It seems most of it was funded not through taking more UK students (or even students from elsewhere in the EU who by law could not be charged more than British students) but taking students from Asia and to a lesser extent the Americas and Africa. The big supplier of students is China. Students from outside the EU pay fees three times higher than what English students pay. Here it is important to note 'English' students because when tuition fees were introduced for students in 2006/7 they did not come to Scotland for Scottish students studying there and there were reduced rates in Wales and Northern Ireland, already a differentiated 'market' was appearing.
The market in 'international students' as they are called is not infinite and with China building more universities and other EU universities teaching courses in English, plus continued competition from the USA and Australia, only briefly dented by their difficulty with foreigners following the 11th September 2001 attacks, UK universities can no longer rely on these students as a 'cash cow'. Also these students only want to study particular courses, especially in business rather than the full extent of the curriculum. Talking to one lecturer they said that on some business and management courses the classes are 90-95% Chinese students now. Universities have expanded faster than their revenue base has done. Some have balanced this well, some badly, and, of course, the current sharp cuts in public spending, cutting the grant universities get for teaching by 40%. Apparently from 2012 only science, engineering, mathematics and foreign language degree courses will receive funding, other subject areas will have to generate their own income.
Up until last week universities were limited in what they could charge UK students. This limit has been raised to £9000 (€10,600; US$14,400) per year, i.e. £27,000 for a three year course. Effectively this brings the charge to UK students in line with what international students were charged. In fact some so-called 'premium' courses especially in business have had exemptions and been charging such high fees already for everyone. Students will be loaned this money and will only have to pay it when they start earning £21,000 per year. Given that unemployment of recent graduates is around 25% at present, many of them are not going to be repaying for many years to come. The so-called graduate 'premium' of earning more because you have a degree only really applies to sectors like banking in which most people can become rich. Remember these days that nurses have to have degrees and yet the starting salary for them is just on £21,000, which is around £10,000 lower than the national average salary. Now, with the current fees, most universities charge the maximum, they need the money. However, there is an expectation that with the £9000 some universities will charge less, the implication being that those 'lesser' universities so perceived last year will become cheaper universities; they will attract poorer people to do cheaper courses and leave the 'proper' universities to the wealthy and privileged it is clear that a lot of commentators feel should be the only people to go to university. As Margaret Thatcher said about studying Anglo-Saxon in the 1980s, I believe at the University of Oxford, 'what a luxury'. A 'good' degree from an 'elite' university is now going to become something the wealthy can indulge in. By the back door, the polytechnic segregation has been re-introduced.
We cannot avoid the fact that if we want universities as large as we have them now money must come from somewhere. This current government is unwilling to provide it. I favour a graduate tax, but this was ruled out a couple of months ago by the government, one which is averse to anything called a tax. In many ways, however, the tax is effectively a private one as students will pay back the money with 'real' interest rates. Up until August 2010, student loans were repaid at a nominal interest rate, which with recent low rates had actually fallen to a negative interest rate of -0.4% on loans taken out before 1998, which meant that even if you made no repayments your loan decreased. Now, however if you took the loan out before 1998 you pay 4.4% and if later, 1.5% unless the bank base rate rises which if it does the interest rate will rise to a maximum of 4.4%. Before August the rate for these later loans was 0% which meant students just paid back the capital. Now, even before the cap on fees was taken off and even before a more market-orientated interest rate was introduced the average undergraduate was leaving university with debts of £25,000. There is a whole issue about how high rents, food and utilities are in the UK anyway, which obviously contributes a lot of what students spend. Many supplement their state loans with bank loans, at commercial rates of interest. Even if fees had not been permitted to rise, student debt levels would have risen. Student debt has meant that people from social categories 4-7 (i.e. the old working class categories) going to university has not risen at all since 2002, the ongoing rise has been in middle class people and even they now are feeling the squeeze.
The government is saying that universities charging more than £6000 per year on a course must put in steps to assist working class students to attend. In fact they were compelled to do this from when fees were first introduced and most have a sliding scale of help, though this then annoys the middle class students just out of the support band and allegations of parents splitting up so their children can get funding. There is no evidence that since 2002 such assistance has raised working class participation in universities, but perhaps the level has not fallen in the way it would have done if such university grants were in place. One factor that is constantly overlooked is how people are actually averse to getting into such vast debt even if help is offered. This tends to affect people from working class backgrounds more than other social groups and men more than women which is one reason why there are no 6 women studying at UK universities for every 4 men. Knowing that you will have £27,000 of debt just for fees, let alone the debt for living costs which we can estimate is around £16,000 for three years (obviously depending where you are studying, which is why so many students stay at home with their parents now), you are looking at £43,000 of debt, which even on the magic £21,000 is more than two years' salary. With the interest rate of just 1.5% and taking 10 years to clear the debt, just for the fees, you will pay £31,334 by the end, that is a lot to clear in 10 years, so we will most likely see people stretching it out over 25 years like a mortgage (perhaps meaning they cannot get a mortgage as well, taking the best educated people out of the market for buying houses) and this would cost you £39,175. If the rate is 4.4% then it is over £41,000 over 10 years, again, note, just for the fees. It will be very easy for students to rack up more than £100,000 of debt by the time they have paid it off, with even currently very low interest rates.
People are going to be very critical of what they get for their money. I have heard students on public transport pricing up individual lectures, and complaining while the snow was closing roads, that they needed a refund for the lectures cancelled when staff and students could not get in. They will demand courses that will give them jobs. This is what the government want. They want ordinary people only to study a narrow range of vocational courses and places seen as 'cheap' or 'second rate' and leave the rest to the already wealthy. It is clear universities will have to close many humanities subjects let alone things like art and even pure sciences such as astronomy. If there is no clear occupation at the end of the degree it is going to be off the curriculum. In addition, you will find the only people who become researchers in social sciences or astronomers are people from very rich backgrounds, just as was the case in the 18th century, the kind of society it seems apparent David Cameron wants to engineer. Even in the Conservative Party he is turning back the clock from the culture of the days of Heath, Thatcher and Major in which hard working people from ordinary if not poor backgrounds could get on in the party, now you have to already be from the elite.
Some universities, probably led by the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge, will become private. It makes no sense for them to chase after the measly sums the state is giving them, with what they might see as restrictions when they might as well charge their students the same fees and get to have it all on their own terms. Some UK universities are already struggling, in some towns lay offs have been in their hundreds. People do not seem to realise that universities employing 5000 or more people are like large factories and when they close it ripples out through the local economy as expenditure in local shops, on rent and public transport, as well as a cheap supply of labour disappears. Closing a university will take thousands of previously well-off people out of the local economy, plus all the tens of thousands (most universities now have over 20,000 students) of students. I know many towns loathe students but they will miss the money they bring especially during this recession (or is it bad enough yet to call it a depression?)
These institutions will be absorbed by others or private companies or may simply collapse. I imagine we will see mergers and ironically, those post-1992 universities who have had a more robust market model actually buying up parts of more established universities who have had a not as tight an economic model during the boom years. At many universities students from outside the UK will become the majority as they already are in some subjects. As unfunded courses are dropped and the focus is purely on the most profitable, those courses which already attract lots of foreign money will become dominant. UK students will become a minority on many campuses. There will also be lots of redundant academics swilling around in the economy, especially from arts, humanities, social sciences and pure sciences. Given the commercial sector's aversion to anyone from an academic background, it is very likely you will have a lot of unemployable but highly educated people and what they will do as they fall into poverty is an interesting question, especially as the public sector where they might have previously found work also contracts.
I envisage some imaginative students will leave the UK. Apparently the University of Maastricht is happy to take students at equivalent to £1500 per year fees at present and teach them in English (knowing that most British people have no grasp of any language bar their own) and with lower living costs than the UK. British university students are perhaps going to move into the position that Chinese and Indian students have held coming to Europe and the USA in the past. Clever American universities would also tap into this market, if they need to.
In David Cameron's shockingly vigorous drive to make the UK a far more divided and elitist society, universities which, since the 1960s, have been seen as a way for ordinary people to advance themselves, are clearly going to come under attack. The thing is, our competitors are still turning out more graduates than the UK and right across the subject spectrum not just in very limited areas. It seems likely that in the future the government will find it difficult to find any British people qualified to advise it on the economy or social development let alone cultural issues, it will have to rely on Chinese people. Students often stay around the university town they go to, Sheffield in particular has benefited from this. The UK now will be exporting intelligent people to the Netherlands and other EU states many of whom will not come back. I imagine many more will flee the UK to escape the huge debt burden on their heads. As with so much of the current government's policy, this is being done for extreme ideological reasons, to smash meritocracy and return British society to the control of the privileged. All the stuff about the deficit is just a front to cover such ardent ideology.
I lived through a period of growing opportunity, with higher education a core element of that. It is being killed off very quickly. Before the next election we will see a fall in university students, the closure of some universities and a new elite, high-priced band of institutions, some of them private, and even these teaching a far narrower range of subjects than before. Other institutions will be offering what are perceived as second or third rate degrees, still necessary to get a job whilst being disparaged, and coming at a huge financial cost to individuals who as a result will be unable to contribute to the economy. The choice will be to join private business and scrape enough together to buy a house or study and rent for the rest of your life. Both models favour the kind of society that the government wants: one in which landlords and banks make vast profits, even beyond their previous excesses, for the crumbs they provide to ordinary people. It will be a society in which study will be reserved for the rich not the intelligent. This will naturally mean that talent will go abroad and the UK economy will be weak compared to its rivals, but if the city merchant bankers can still make their profits, the government's view is that the rest of us should be humble and grateful for what we can scrape and have no right to protest about the lack of opportunity and penury the rising generation face.
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
How I Became Addicted to 'A Room With A View' (1985) and the Consequences
As anyone who has followed this blog for any time will know some of the greatest detriment I have done to my own life is to have been afraid, primarily in two areas: travelling and relationships with women. In many ways in my teenage years and twenties, I was a very lucky man. Despite having some minor ailments, not being sporty; appearing very freckly, and gangly in how I walked, and having my self-confidence blown apart by my parents telling me I looked as if I was mentally disabled, girls/women of my age would ask me out on dates. These women were certainly not desperate for male companionship and when rebuffed by me, as was usually the case, went on to have other relationships. My fear that somehow they were doing it for dishonest motives or simply as a joke, was insulting to them but also meant I ended up lacking the experience of having youthful relationships which then meant I had little chance as a man in his late twenties and into his thirties to engage with these properly. Part of the problem stems from how I perceived relationships between young people should function and for this I have to blame, in large part, what was my favourite movie for many years: 'A Room With A View' (1985).
I was 17 when I first saw 'A Room With A View', so had already been making many of the mistakes I have listed above. However, at that stage things remain retrievable in a way they are not when you are 34. To put the movie in context, it was one of the most successful in the UK produced by the Merchant Ivory partnership (formed in 1961 of the two lovers, producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory) working with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. With 'Heat and Dust' (1983), 'A Room with a View' (1985), 'Maurice' (1987), Howards End (1992) and 'The Remains of the Day' (1993) at the time of the TV series 'Brideshead Revisited' (1981) and 'The Jewel in the Crown' (1983) [not made by them but of a similar genre], movie culture in the UK was defined as being focused on the period of the late 19th century to the 1930s. Subsequently with the very successful television version of 'Pride and Prejudice' (1994) for the following decade the focus stepped back to the late 18th/early 19th century. Perhaps in the grimness and rioting of the 1980s we were looking for escape to an apparently nicer middle class existence in which manners and behaviour were more refined, though certainly in many of these movies not all behaviour is like that; homosexuality, in particular is suppressed and women are fitted into rigid roles, though this was a contributing factor to the rise of Post-Feminism that personally I began to detect from 1988 onwards.
With my parents away on holiday I began going to the cinema alone to escape the tedium of what was on television, a habit I was to continue more vigorously from when I finally left home and lived alone, 1987-2005 . This was my first foray into that kind of activity, that you did not have to be with anyone to watch a movie, and, in fact, it could be better that way if the movie was what had drawn you rather than the social experience. I watched 'Mona Lisa' (1986) the week before seeing 'A Room With A View', so it must have been still doing the rounds from the previous year. 'Mona Lisa' is an unpleasant British movie, well made, but it left such a bitter taste in my mind that I wanted to blot it out with something more refined, hence going to see 'A Room With A View'. (I was to do something similar the following year, going to see 'Poussiere D'Ange' ['Angel Dust'] (1987) deliberately after being unsettled by 'Angel Heart' (1987)).
Of course, I was utterly swept away by 'A Room With A View' with its stunning scenery of 19th century Florence combined with stirring music which I have written about before. It is a funny movie in many parts but also a lovely romance. The hero, George Emerson (played by Julian Sands) sweeping the heroine Lucy Honeychurch (played by Helena Bonham-Carter) off her feet in a wheat field and them later sitting in the window with Florence in the background, kissing while Lucy reads a letter, were scenes that I loved and wanted to replicate in my own life. The tension comes around Lucy being unwilling to admit her passion for the unconventional young man who is of a slightly lower class (he works for the railways and his widowed father is a thinker and politically interested), but ultimately does. There is a wonderful range of quirky English characters played by skilled performers such as Denholm Elliot, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Daniel Day Lewis and Simon Callow which charm you too. I have always liked women with long dark hair and Bonham-Carter fitted that perfectly. She went on to appear in other period movies, notably 'Where Angels Fear to Tread' (1991 - from another Forster novel also set in Italy); 'Howards End' and 'The Wings of the Dove' (1997). Once I had the video I would watch it on my birthday and dream of such a romance. I could clearly post myself in the rather awkward, public servant, intellectual role of George Emerson and somehow anticipated women would love to be swept off by me even if I was not a fraction as handsome as Julian Sands.
Of course, I knew I was not living in the 1890s (and the director seemed to set it back in time a little from the 1908 source novel by E.M. Forster which features electric trams in Florence that do not appear in the movie), but had a belief I would meet a woman who would be intrigued by me and would not scream if I swept her off her feet in an Italian field. At this time, I did envisage travelling around Europe far more than I was ever in fact to do. My mother had always said that when she had been a teenager in the 1950s the way young people 'learnt' how to have relationships was through watching the movies which would show them how to behave and even how to kiss. She felt that the trouble with the 1980s was that too many movies showed abusive relationships in which sex was the key focus and so men in particular did not learn how to behave around women. In fact, for her son, the complete opposite happened and I ended up having my approach to women set by 1980s visions of late Victorian behaviour. This was exacerbated by my friends all being of the 'Dungeons and Dragons' types and not having relationships with women until they had passed thirty and by the fact that by the time I reached university it was beginning to fill (especially in my accommodation hall) with Post-Feminist women actually seeking not even a Forster-style relationship but an Austen-style one.
The trouble for me was that I knew that women did not want you to assert your desire for them and increasingly if you did, then you risked being charged with assault. We were advised that touching or kissing a woman even innocently, in the times of increasing litigation, was hazardous and there was talk of signed permission before sexual intercourse (I do not think some universities know how much they screwed up their students' lives). I mixed with too many people from private schools who were only encountering the opposite sex for the first time on a regular basis and who like me expected it all to proceed as if it were 1887 rather than 1987. I had no appeal for them, being from the wrong background and too politicised and yet I lacked all the tools to engage with the kind of women who might have liked me. There were no wheat fields, there was no time for walking in lush landscapes working up to ask permission to kiss the woman and yet, leaping in was clearly ruled out by what we had been told. Consequently years went by with no relationships and now that women expect a man to have a sexual CV by the time he reaches 21, I was increasingly ruled out on that basis.
Hampered by the Victorian approach that had shaped so much of the end of my teenage years, the relationships I ended up in were increasingly termed as 'Victorian', i.e. very chaste. I would go shopping with the woman, have tea with her, go and see a movie, but nothing else happened. I wanted to kiss her, but the chance never came up and the women themselves seemed to expect me to make a move and yet I feared they would then cry assault. Ultimately I ended up as almost a female friend, they would do domestic stuff with me then go off on dates in the evening with their boyfriends. They would come and tell me about all their difficulties with these men who were clearly so much more exciting than me, when in fact I wanted to be their lover. It took a woman who wanted me as 'the other man', i.e. to have an affair from her own marriage and was very straight forward about asking for sex, that managed to shake me out of the situation and get the tools to be more proactive. Though I did continue to have some Victorian-style relationships, funnily enough until I left London.
I suppose the lesson of all this, is do not live your life by how it is shown in movies. Perhaps we have gone to the opposite extreme from that period of the late 1980s/early 1990s when behaviour of the previous century seemed to be returning; the internet has had a huge impact on this both in terms of what you can learn and who you can meet. I have lost my affection for 'A Room With A View' though I still would recommend it because it is an enjoyable way to pass the time. I am angry now that I let it shape my expectations far too much, though I recognise it was not helped by having such critical parents and ignorant friends. The visuals and the music are engaging but it was a mistake for me to be seduced by them and then hamstrung in thinking that such a fictional approach would work in the late 20th century for real.
I was 17 when I first saw 'A Room With A View', so had already been making many of the mistakes I have listed above. However, at that stage things remain retrievable in a way they are not when you are 34. To put the movie in context, it was one of the most successful in the UK produced by the Merchant Ivory partnership (formed in 1961 of the two lovers, producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory) working with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. With 'Heat and Dust' (1983), 'A Room with a View' (1985), 'Maurice' (1987), Howards End (1992) and 'The Remains of the Day' (1993) at the time of the TV series 'Brideshead Revisited' (1981) and 'The Jewel in the Crown' (1983) [not made by them but of a similar genre], movie culture in the UK was defined as being focused on the period of the late 19th century to the 1930s. Subsequently with the very successful television version of 'Pride and Prejudice' (1994) for the following decade the focus stepped back to the late 18th/early 19th century. Perhaps in the grimness and rioting of the 1980s we were looking for escape to an apparently nicer middle class existence in which manners and behaviour were more refined, though certainly in many of these movies not all behaviour is like that; homosexuality, in particular is suppressed and women are fitted into rigid roles, though this was a contributing factor to the rise of Post-Feminism that personally I began to detect from 1988 onwards.
With my parents away on holiday I began going to the cinema alone to escape the tedium of what was on television, a habit I was to continue more vigorously from when I finally left home and lived alone, 1987-2005 . This was my first foray into that kind of activity, that you did not have to be with anyone to watch a movie, and, in fact, it could be better that way if the movie was what had drawn you rather than the social experience. I watched 'Mona Lisa' (1986) the week before seeing 'A Room With A View', so it must have been still doing the rounds from the previous year. 'Mona Lisa' is an unpleasant British movie, well made, but it left such a bitter taste in my mind that I wanted to blot it out with something more refined, hence going to see 'A Room With A View'. (I was to do something similar the following year, going to see 'Poussiere D'Ange' ['Angel Dust'] (1987) deliberately after being unsettled by 'Angel Heart' (1987)).
Of course, I was utterly swept away by 'A Room With A View' with its stunning scenery of 19th century Florence combined with stirring music which I have written about before. It is a funny movie in many parts but also a lovely romance. The hero, George Emerson (played by Julian Sands) sweeping the heroine Lucy Honeychurch (played by Helena Bonham-Carter) off her feet in a wheat field and them later sitting in the window with Florence in the background, kissing while Lucy reads a letter, were scenes that I loved and wanted to replicate in my own life. The tension comes around Lucy being unwilling to admit her passion for the unconventional young man who is of a slightly lower class (he works for the railways and his widowed father is a thinker and politically interested), but ultimately does. There is a wonderful range of quirky English characters played by skilled performers such as Denholm Elliot, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Daniel Day Lewis and Simon Callow which charm you too. I have always liked women with long dark hair and Bonham-Carter fitted that perfectly. She went on to appear in other period movies, notably 'Where Angels Fear to Tread' (1991 - from another Forster novel also set in Italy); 'Howards End' and 'The Wings of the Dove' (1997). Once I had the video I would watch it on my birthday and dream of such a romance. I could clearly post myself in the rather awkward, public servant, intellectual role of George Emerson and somehow anticipated women would love to be swept off by me even if I was not a fraction as handsome as Julian Sands.
Of course, I knew I was not living in the 1890s (and the director seemed to set it back in time a little from the 1908 source novel by E.M. Forster which features electric trams in Florence that do not appear in the movie), but had a belief I would meet a woman who would be intrigued by me and would not scream if I swept her off her feet in an Italian field. At this time, I did envisage travelling around Europe far more than I was ever in fact to do. My mother had always said that when she had been a teenager in the 1950s the way young people 'learnt' how to have relationships was through watching the movies which would show them how to behave and even how to kiss. She felt that the trouble with the 1980s was that too many movies showed abusive relationships in which sex was the key focus and so men in particular did not learn how to behave around women. In fact, for her son, the complete opposite happened and I ended up having my approach to women set by 1980s visions of late Victorian behaviour. This was exacerbated by my friends all being of the 'Dungeons and Dragons' types and not having relationships with women until they had passed thirty and by the fact that by the time I reached university it was beginning to fill (especially in my accommodation hall) with Post-Feminist women actually seeking not even a Forster-style relationship but an Austen-style one.
The trouble for me was that I knew that women did not want you to assert your desire for them and increasingly if you did, then you risked being charged with assault. We were advised that touching or kissing a woman even innocently, in the times of increasing litigation, was hazardous and there was talk of signed permission before sexual intercourse (I do not think some universities know how much they screwed up their students' lives). I mixed with too many people from private schools who were only encountering the opposite sex for the first time on a regular basis and who like me expected it all to proceed as if it were 1887 rather than 1987. I had no appeal for them, being from the wrong background and too politicised and yet I lacked all the tools to engage with the kind of women who might have liked me. There were no wheat fields, there was no time for walking in lush landscapes working up to ask permission to kiss the woman and yet, leaping in was clearly ruled out by what we had been told. Consequently years went by with no relationships and now that women expect a man to have a sexual CV by the time he reaches 21, I was increasingly ruled out on that basis.
Hampered by the Victorian approach that had shaped so much of the end of my teenage years, the relationships I ended up in were increasingly termed as 'Victorian', i.e. very chaste. I would go shopping with the woman, have tea with her, go and see a movie, but nothing else happened. I wanted to kiss her, but the chance never came up and the women themselves seemed to expect me to make a move and yet I feared they would then cry assault. Ultimately I ended up as almost a female friend, they would do domestic stuff with me then go off on dates in the evening with their boyfriends. They would come and tell me about all their difficulties with these men who were clearly so much more exciting than me, when in fact I wanted to be their lover. It took a woman who wanted me as 'the other man', i.e. to have an affair from her own marriage and was very straight forward about asking for sex, that managed to shake me out of the situation and get the tools to be more proactive. Though I did continue to have some Victorian-style relationships, funnily enough until I left London.
I suppose the lesson of all this, is do not live your life by how it is shown in movies. Perhaps we have gone to the opposite extreme from that period of the late 1980s/early 1990s when behaviour of the previous century seemed to be returning; the internet has had a huge impact on this both in terms of what you can learn and who you can meet. I have lost my affection for 'A Room With A View' though I still would recommend it because it is an enjoyable way to pass the time. I am angry now that I let it shape my expectations far too much, though I recognise it was not helped by having such critical parents and ignorant friends. The visuals and the music are engaging but it was a mistake for me to be seduced by them and then hamstrung in thinking that such a fictional approach would work in the late 20th century for real.
Monday, 28 December 2009
Sledge & Shakespeare: Polonius's Precepts and Other Advice for Children
Having advised that a lot of advice about how people will behave in terms of relationships can be gleaned from soul songs, I was reminded of an activity that the woman who lives in my house has been carrying out for the benefit of her son. He is currently 8 years old meaning he is only 5 years from being a teenager. Given that the advice from schools and the media is that discussions about sex begin with children from the age of 8 onwards (he has already found the delight of rubbing himself up against furniture and has crushes on characters he sees on the television) it seems apt that over the past year she has been assembling guidance on how to live as a teenager and an independent adult. I noted a recent radio report about a hostel for homeless people aged 16-18 and one of the staff said that to help the young people to find and keep a home they trained them in how to cook and to run a household budget. I would hope that in most houses this kind of training was going on from 13 if not from 11 onwards. At 8 the boy in my house can already make toast, cook omlettes and prepare hot chocolate as well as simple emptying food preparations such as making cordials and dishing out cereals. I suppose when so many adults have huge debts and the extent of their cooking skills are limited to microwaving a ready meal, they have little to pass on of much use. I also remember overhearing a 19 year old woman saying she was looking forward to leaving home so that she could escape the fresh vegetables and fruit that her mother kept forcing on her and instead eat 'proper', i.e. processed food. So I acknowledge that whilst you might teach a child good things whether they pay any attention to them is another issue.
I have been draughted in to provide the sexual aspects from a male perspective. Given that I did not have sex until I was 34, I imagine I am not best equipped for this. However, knowing I was a latecomer, I did read a great deal and took advantage in the mid 1990s on all the programmes late at night especially on Channel 4 about how to do 'good' sex. I certainly know women are all different and each is sensitive in different parts of her body (sometimes changing at different times of the month) and that the sex they generally want is not the kind you see in pornographic movies, which is often very focused purely on male pleasure, especially the fellatio followed by ejaculation into the woman's face. While some women are happy to carry out oral sex usually this is on the assumption they will get the same in return and certainly they do not want to be showered in ejaculate, yet this is the image that is all too common in what young men watch.
Though I sometimes squirm when I read advice from the USA because of the very confused moral stance there which is often about appearances than actual practical existence (I read one book which was supposed to be about coping with break ups but kept suggesting that if marriage was not on the cards then the woman should break a relationship anyway; it would not accept that an unmarried relationship can be a very good one and so drew attention from when you should break up, for example, when abuse is involved), but one piece of advice that I will pass on to the 8 year old in time is 'if you don't feel comfortable telling me [i.e. female partner] about it, then it is cheating'. Saying that, men should be more confident about talking about non-sexual interaction with women. Of my 14 employees, 13 are women. There is nothing there I should be ashamed about, but I need to talk to them on the telephone and via email, and want to be able to do that without my girlfriend getting suspicious. The same concern came up when I had genito-urinary problems, she would not listen to the causes and just assumed it must be a venereal disease, even though, aside from her, I have only had one sexual partner and that ended in 2003. Building trust takes a long time and men have to realise they are not judged on their own terms they are judged by the last few men the woman had a relationship with (which clearly all came to an end) and what happened in her friends' relationships.
Anyway, the woman in my house (I am beginning to worry that is becoming a phrase like 'her indoors' was in the 'Minder' television series (1979-94; 2009)) was laying down various lessons and principles that she has learnt in her life, having an alcoholic boyfriend, moving continents, running a pub, being a child minder and a single mother as well as day-to-day domestic stuff like cleaning and cooking which to so many young people, especially boys, seems a complete mystery. While at university I was stunned at how incapable many other students were. I knew I was not as adept as friends of mine who had been in the Scouts or trekked to remote areas with their families and, in particular, seemed poorly equipped to deal with the emotional aspects, but at least I could cook healthy food and clean and iron my clothes unlike many others.
Back to the thread. As soul song lyrics are often overlooked as a source of guidance in terms of relationships I was reminded that other lines can help you out that people tend to forget and this brings us to Polonius, a character in William Shakespeare's play, 'Hamlet' (1603). He is a rather silly, aged (well probably middle aged given the age of his son Laertes, just starting university) aide to the Danish royal family. In Act 1, Scene 3 (lines 55-81) he gives advice to Laertes, laid out below. Now, I have read commentaries which see this as satirical writing from Shakespeare regarding 'homespun wisdom', see Jem Bloomfield's article: http://shakespeareantheatre.suite101.com/article.cfm/polonius_speech_in_hamlet I would contest the satirical aspect. Shakespeare was a skilful reader of human character and behaviour which is why his plays are still so highly regarded four centuries later. 'Hamlet' is very much about the relationship between grown-up children and their parents and step-parents. Whilst most adult children are not walking round considering whether to kill their step-father in revenge, a lot of the play is actually about mundane difficulties between parents and adult children. Ask any divorced/widowed mother who has remarried when her children are adults about the challenges that she faces from those children and you will see parallels to Gertrude in 'Hamlet'. The fact that their parents are having sex with whoever, let alone someone who is a stranger to them, is something that many adults find difficult to ever accept.
Thus, even if Polonius is silly at times, and he is generally well meaning and protective of his employer, Gertrude, what he says to Laertes, I believe is a good checklist for people going off to university today. Given that 42% of UK 18 year olds are now going into higher education, these are lines that need to be wheeled out a bit more often. This is the text:
There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade.
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
Now, I do not agree with all of this. I would certainly say that young people should speak up and express their opinions. I also think that we should censure bad behaviour of others because otherwise they simply get away with it. However, complaining in the UK has become a pastime as well as a daily activity and maybe it needs some tempering. Not rising to the bait from men wanting to provoke a fight, is very tough, but we need more of it. Spilling someone's drink in a crowded bar or simply your gaze looking over someone is no excuse for people to end up in casualty and with criminal records. I would say these days, walk away the moment any trouble seems to be appearing. In debate and intellectual discussion, which these days seems very rare given the demands from parents for students simply to be taught to complete the exam, certainly be adept and be well informed. We have too much physical contesting in our society and too little intellectual.
The warning about clothing is interesting given our fashion conscious age (in many ways no different from the Elizabethan period, though with far fewer options for men). I read of how so many students now look like clones because even before they arrive on campus they have been instructed on social networking sites what clothes they should wear. I guess this is the Goth in me creeping in, bemoaning that every student is now in jeans, all the men in hooded tops and all the women in Ugg boots. Students have to realise that their standard of living will be lower than that most have enjoyed at home. They will wear fewer changes of clothes, live in poorer quality housing and have more mundane food. Of course, many now live with their parents, and I think that is bad, they must make a break from the family home if they are to become true adults (this problem applies to people not becoming students too, the ridiculously high cost of even rented accommodation in the UK means many cannot move out until their mid-30s and I feel this is a big contributor to the juvenilisation of adult behaviour in the UK leading to so much debt, violence and other crime).
Other elements I support very strongly. If you talk to anyone who has been to university you find that they still have friends from there decades later. This may decrease as people tend increasingly to go to their local university and live at home, so are likely not to lose touch with local friends. However, there is the bond of shared experience that can be as strong for friendships as say, serving in the armed forces together. However, the percentage of people who will become life long friends compared to those you will meet and may become acquaintances is very small. A lot of people have agendas and you can be forced into lots of corners by people who want something even if it is just not to be lonely. Often the concerns out-strip the real hazard. People are very suspicious these days of anyone who seems remotely religious because they suspect they have an ulterior motive of seeking converts. However, as advised here, tread carefully and check out people before they designating them life long friends (they might not want this anyway). Saying this, I know two couples who met in their first week at university, still married 22 years after that.
The thing about borrowing is crucial. Debt is seen as a fact of life now, especially for students who are compelled to incur thousands of pounds of debt to even begin a course. However, there is different types of debt and the charges on a student loan are very different from a bank loan let alone credit card and especially store card borrowing (bringing us back to the gaudy clothes). Certainly loans between individuals is an area that you have to be careful about. Doing part-time work before going to university I had already learnt never to lend anyone any money that I could not afford to lose; I wrote it off the moment I handed it over and treated it as a bonus if it was ever paid back. This means you have to refuse people and when I did that, their true character often appeared, one colleague simply then restrained me and stole the money from my pocket, which fortunately meant him being kicked off the job (one of the advantages of working in a petrol station with full CCTV coverage).
As Polonius (i.e. Shakespeare) notes, borrowing money yourself disrupts friendships and also can lead you not to face up to the reality of your situation. Being at university simply in terms of food and accommodation (including the innumerable utility bills) is very expensive, especially given what landlords and utility companies are allowed to get away with. Then these days there is computer equipment (and do not forget the specialist software which you will be compared to buy, usually at reduced rate, but not typically free) before you even get on to the gigs and the beer and the odd play or movie and possibly a trip away somewhere. Keep a real check on outgoings, but do not do like me and note down every time you buy a beer in a notebook, it makes you unpopular. Assume money taken from a cash machine is lost to you. Keep receipts from grocery shopping. Pay as much as you can in cash as you are far more conscious of what you are spending than if you do it buy card, especially when around the shops. I know companies try to compel you to put in standing orders, but instead try and do individual payments, (I do this with my council tax still) as you will be reminded, each time you pay, of how much is going out.
About being true to yourself, this is a life long mission and something very few of us achieve. In this society you get very little credit it for it, we get much more for presenting ourselves as something/someone else. However, if you want a genuine intimate relationship this is the area in which you certainly need to know yourself and be able to communicate it clearly to your partner. A key worry is that your flaws will put them off, if that is the case then they were not worth having. Going away from home, especially into higher education is when you can learn about yourself, what your sexuality truly is, what times of the day you work best, what food you actually like and what food is actually good for you, what kind of people you like to be with (not simply the ones you are dumped into the same space with) and you are likely to meet people from countries you have not even thought about and people with very different views (and with very similar views) to you on a whole range of things and not just religion, politics and football, but everything you can think of. Sorry, I have spun off into very Polonius like mode myself now, I guess it is an affliction of the middle aged not to want people make the mistakes they have seen made so many times before.
Overall, then, I think that there is a lot of good advice out there and when the 8 year old in my house reaches 13 he is liable to be bombarded with a strange mix of Sledge and Shakespeare in the hope that some of it will penetrate his ipod-filled ears and he will be at least a little better equipped for the adult world than the bulk of young people living in the UK seem to be.
I have been draughted in to provide the sexual aspects from a male perspective. Given that I did not have sex until I was 34, I imagine I am not best equipped for this. However, knowing I was a latecomer, I did read a great deal and took advantage in the mid 1990s on all the programmes late at night especially on Channel 4 about how to do 'good' sex. I certainly know women are all different and each is sensitive in different parts of her body (sometimes changing at different times of the month) and that the sex they generally want is not the kind you see in pornographic movies, which is often very focused purely on male pleasure, especially the fellatio followed by ejaculation into the woman's face. While some women are happy to carry out oral sex usually this is on the assumption they will get the same in return and certainly they do not want to be showered in ejaculate, yet this is the image that is all too common in what young men watch.
Though I sometimes squirm when I read advice from the USA because of the very confused moral stance there which is often about appearances than actual practical existence (I read one book which was supposed to be about coping with break ups but kept suggesting that if marriage was not on the cards then the woman should break a relationship anyway; it would not accept that an unmarried relationship can be a very good one and so drew attention from when you should break up, for example, when abuse is involved), but one piece of advice that I will pass on to the 8 year old in time is 'if you don't feel comfortable telling me [i.e. female partner] about it, then it is cheating'. Saying that, men should be more confident about talking about non-sexual interaction with women. Of my 14 employees, 13 are women. There is nothing there I should be ashamed about, but I need to talk to them on the telephone and via email, and want to be able to do that without my girlfriend getting suspicious. The same concern came up when I had genito-urinary problems, she would not listen to the causes and just assumed it must be a venereal disease, even though, aside from her, I have only had one sexual partner and that ended in 2003. Building trust takes a long time and men have to realise they are not judged on their own terms they are judged by the last few men the woman had a relationship with (which clearly all came to an end) and what happened in her friends' relationships.
Anyway, the woman in my house (I am beginning to worry that is becoming a phrase like 'her indoors' was in the 'Minder' television series (1979-94; 2009)) was laying down various lessons and principles that she has learnt in her life, having an alcoholic boyfriend, moving continents, running a pub, being a child minder and a single mother as well as day-to-day domestic stuff like cleaning and cooking which to so many young people, especially boys, seems a complete mystery. While at university I was stunned at how incapable many other students were. I knew I was not as adept as friends of mine who had been in the Scouts or trekked to remote areas with their families and, in particular, seemed poorly equipped to deal with the emotional aspects, but at least I could cook healthy food and clean and iron my clothes unlike many others.
Back to the thread. As soul song lyrics are often overlooked as a source of guidance in terms of relationships I was reminded that other lines can help you out that people tend to forget and this brings us to Polonius, a character in William Shakespeare's play, 'Hamlet' (1603). He is a rather silly, aged (well probably middle aged given the age of his son Laertes, just starting university) aide to the Danish royal family. In Act 1, Scene 3 (lines 55-81) he gives advice to Laertes, laid out below. Now, I have read commentaries which see this as satirical writing from Shakespeare regarding 'homespun wisdom', see Jem Bloomfield's article: http://shakespeareantheatre.suite101.com/article.cfm/polonius_speech_in_hamlet I would contest the satirical aspect. Shakespeare was a skilful reader of human character and behaviour which is why his plays are still so highly regarded four centuries later. 'Hamlet' is very much about the relationship between grown-up children and their parents and step-parents. Whilst most adult children are not walking round considering whether to kill their step-father in revenge, a lot of the play is actually about mundane difficulties between parents and adult children. Ask any divorced/widowed mother who has remarried when her children are adults about the challenges that she faces from those children and you will see parallels to Gertrude in 'Hamlet'. The fact that their parents are having sex with whoever, let alone someone who is a stranger to them, is something that many adults find difficult to ever accept.
Thus, even if Polonius is silly at times, and he is generally well meaning and protective of his employer, Gertrude, what he says to Laertes, I believe is a good checklist for people going off to university today. Given that 42% of UK 18 year olds are now going into higher education, these are lines that need to be wheeled out a bit more often. This is the text:
There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade.
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
Now, I do not agree with all of this. I would certainly say that young people should speak up and express their opinions. I also think that we should censure bad behaviour of others because otherwise they simply get away with it. However, complaining in the UK has become a pastime as well as a daily activity and maybe it needs some tempering. Not rising to the bait from men wanting to provoke a fight, is very tough, but we need more of it. Spilling someone's drink in a crowded bar or simply your gaze looking over someone is no excuse for people to end up in casualty and with criminal records. I would say these days, walk away the moment any trouble seems to be appearing. In debate and intellectual discussion, which these days seems very rare given the demands from parents for students simply to be taught to complete the exam, certainly be adept and be well informed. We have too much physical contesting in our society and too little intellectual.
The warning about clothing is interesting given our fashion conscious age (in many ways no different from the Elizabethan period, though with far fewer options for men). I read of how so many students now look like clones because even before they arrive on campus they have been instructed on social networking sites what clothes they should wear. I guess this is the Goth in me creeping in, bemoaning that every student is now in jeans, all the men in hooded tops and all the women in Ugg boots. Students have to realise that their standard of living will be lower than that most have enjoyed at home. They will wear fewer changes of clothes, live in poorer quality housing and have more mundane food. Of course, many now live with their parents, and I think that is bad, they must make a break from the family home if they are to become true adults (this problem applies to people not becoming students too, the ridiculously high cost of even rented accommodation in the UK means many cannot move out until their mid-30s and I feel this is a big contributor to the juvenilisation of adult behaviour in the UK leading to so much debt, violence and other crime).
Other elements I support very strongly. If you talk to anyone who has been to university you find that they still have friends from there decades later. This may decrease as people tend increasingly to go to their local university and live at home, so are likely not to lose touch with local friends. However, there is the bond of shared experience that can be as strong for friendships as say, serving in the armed forces together. However, the percentage of people who will become life long friends compared to those you will meet and may become acquaintances is very small. A lot of people have agendas and you can be forced into lots of corners by people who want something even if it is just not to be lonely. Often the concerns out-strip the real hazard. People are very suspicious these days of anyone who seems remotely religious because they suspect they have an ulterior motive of seeking converts. However, as advised here, tread carefully and check out people before they designating them life long friends (they might not want this anyway). Saying this, I know two couples who met in their first week at university, still married 22 years after that.
The thing about borrowing is crucial. Debt is seen as a fact of life now, especially for students who are compelled to incur thousands of pounds of debt to even begin a course. However, there is different types of debt and the charges on a student loan are very different from a bank loan let alone credit card and especially store card borrowing (bringing us back to the gaudy clothes). Certainly loans between individuals is an area that you have to be careful about. Doing part-time work before going to university I had already learnt never to lend anyone any money that I could not afford to lose; I wrote it off the moment I handed it over and treated it as a bonus if it was ever paid back. This means you have to refuse people and when I did that, their true character often appeared, one colleague simply then restrained me and stole the money from my pocket, which fortunately meant him being kicked off the job (one of the advantages of working in a petrol station with full CCTV coverage).
As Polonius (i.e. Shakespeare) notes, borrowing money yourself disrupts friendships and also can lead you not to face up to the reality of your situation. Being at university simply in terms of food and accommodation (including the innumerable utility bills) is very expensive, especially given what landlords and utility companies are allowed to get away with. Then these days there is computer equipment (and do not forget the specialist software which you will be compared to buy, usually at reduced rate, but not typically free) before you even get on to the gigs and the beer and the odd play or movie and possibly a trip away somewhere. Keep a real check on outgoings, but do not do like me and note down every time you buy a beer in a notebook, it makes you unpopular. Assume money taken from a cash machine is lost to you. Keep receipts from grocery shopping. Pay as much as you can in cash as you are far more conscious of what you are spending than if you do it buy card, especially when around the shops. I know companies try to compel you to put in standing orders, but instead try and do individual payments, (I do this with my council tax still) as you will be reminded, each time you pay, of how much is going out.
About being true to yourself, this is a life long mission and something very few of us achieve. In this society you get very little credit it for it, we get much more for presenting ourselves as something/someone else. However, if you want a genuine intimate relationship this is the area in which you certainly need to know yourself and be able to communicate it clearly to your partner. A key worry is that your flaws will put them off, if that is the case then they were not worth having. Going away from home, especially into higher education is when you can learn about yourself, what your sexuality truly is, what times of the day you work best, what food you actually like and what food is actually good for you, what kind of people you like to be with (not simply the ones you are dumped into the same space with) and you are likely to meet people from countries you have not even thought about and people with very different views (and with very similar views) to you on a whole range of things and not just religion, politics and football, but everything you can think of. Sorry, I have spun off into very Polonius like mode myself now, I guess it is an affliction of the middle aged not to want people make the mistakes they have seen made so many times before.
Overall, then, I think that there is a lot of good advice out there and when the 8 year old in my house reaches 13 he is liable to be bombarded with a strange mix of Sledge and Shakespeare in the hope that some of it will penetrate his ipod-filled ears and he will be at least a little better equipped for the adult world than the bulk of young people living in the UK seem to be.
Saturday, 3 October 2009
Economic Model of UK Universities: Unsustainable?
If you live in one of most medium or large towns in the UK you will be aware of the return of university students to your neighbourhood. As I have noted previously, in the view of your average bigot, they are now often seen as only a little better than immigrants. People blame students for a whole host of problems, many of which are either the fault of landlords or other people. There are noisy students as there are noisy teenagers and middle-aged people, but if my district is anything to go by, noisy students make up less than one-in-thirty households and much of the noise seems to be generated now that they are compelled to go outside to smoke. Students are seen as a legitimate target for the disgruntled in a way that blaming immigrants is not. However, hearing about the recommendations from the CBI (Confederation of British Industry, the key employers' association in the UK) about fees for students; reports about how overloaded both the visa and the student loan system has been in dealing with students this year; reports about universities having to exceed the cap on UK student numbers ending up housing some new students in hotels and the news that many UK universities are having to lay off hundreds of staff suggests that there is a major crisis.
Since the 1990s we have seen a massive expansion in student numbers in line with the objective of having 50% of 18-year olds go to university. Though it was falling back in recent years, more older people were also going to university a trend which is reviving now people look for other options in the time of recession. In general most universities now have four times as many students as they did in the mid-1980s and in some towns as many as 1 in 10 people is a student; in Ormskirk, Lancashire, it is now in fact 1 in 2 during term time, though many of these commute from Liverpool. In fact despite students often being seen as 'other' and 'outsiders' on average universities are taking around a quarter and a third of their British students from the local area as it becomes increasingly difficult to afford to live away from home.
Ethically I feel it is vital that anyone with the ability and the desire to go to university has the opportunity to do so. I have no desire, as some commentators have advocated, that we return to an elitist system in which only 6% of 18-year olds attend university as was the case when I went in the late 1980s. We cannot turn back the clock anyway as these days a degree is entrance level requirement and many employers look for an MA or MSc from their prospective employers. This does not simply go for UK employers but globally so if British young people want to work here or abroad we cannot suddenly deny them the chance of getting a degree or we will find that the trend which has long been going on of well-qualified EU people especially from France, Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia will fill jobs in the UK. I am happy for them to do so if they are better, I am not anti-immigration, but I would at least like British young people to stand a chance in the competiton both here and overseas.
Those who want to return to the old days when universities were more categorised and polytechnics were clearly something else, forget that, in fact, it is often now the new universities, the former polytechnics, which are doing economically the best; the University of Southampton made a loss of £20 million this year whereas Edge Hill University (only became a university in 2005) has been turning a profit of £6.5 million each year. This is probably not surprising. Whilst new universities have sought to expand their curriculum they are still more likely to offer the vocationally-focused courses that attract the mass of people attending higher education, especially since the intake widened so much and which appeals to corporate sponsors, many of whom, even in the public sector, seem to remain ambivalent about employing graduates. Of course as London Metropolitan University shows not all new universities are thriving, but also note that University of Exeter shed over 300 staff and closed its chemistry department and another pre-1992 university in my region, the University of Southampton, has been making redundancies this year.
I think a rich culture needs a wide range of subjects taught, studied and researched and so am no advocate of Margaret Thatcher's principle of seeing humanities and social science subjects as 'a luxury' wanting everyone simply to be taught business or science. However, there is a clear demand for more vocational subjects which the older universities are not necessarily so good at. Above all, the economic model we have ended up with at the end of the 2000s is not sustainable. Students began having to pay fees in 1998 and at the time many went round asking what extra they were going to get for their money. What they did not realise was that universities needed that additional income simply to cover what they were already doing, not even to increase it.
Even with student numbers increasing, it has not stopped various institutions having to cut back. I have mentioned Exeter stopping chemistry and when I was in Milton Keynes the nearby University of Luton closed its entire Humanities Faculty in 2001 and I am sure there are many other cases I have not come across. As the redundancies make clear even with the current fee level of £3000 per year universities are not earning enough to keep on the staff they once employed. The CBI said that fees must rise to £5000 per year. This will be harsh on students, but, in fact, on simple economic grounds it is probably the minimum they need just to keep going as they are let alone expand or improve what they offer. The problems with visas which have meant around 20% of international students have been unable to take up the places they have been given at UK universities will bite hard on the universities as each international student (i.e. from outside the EU) pays fees three times the level of a UK student.
So, you say, 'alright, we raise student fees to £5000 per year', but that might be fine for the universities but in fact could backfire sharply by reducing student numbers. Back in 2001 students generally finished university with debts of £12,000, now the figure is around £25,000. Student loans are at a good rate and with the fall in the cost of living some former students even have negative interest (the sum they owe declines even if they make no repayment). However, very few students can sustain themselves on just the official student loans and incur large debts with banks and even harsher lenders. Partly this is because food is expensive in the UK and landlords/ladies charge high rents and rip students off for thousands of pounds; new trendy private student accommodation is appearing in many towns with even higher rents and fixed contracts worse than what is already in the private sector.
The debt hampers graduates right through their lives and actually discourages them from taking further qualifications or retraining later. In addition, it has helped make university a place for women rather than men. Since 2001 the number of women at university has exceeded the number of men and now the ratio is about 6 women for 4 men, with variations between subjects. Men are more debt averse and can often find low paid full-time work more immediately than women, but of course by not going to university they are ruling themselves from ever improving themselves from that kind of work.
Since 2002 the number of people from working class backgrounds going to university has not increased. The rise in student numbers since then has been among the middle class, so even with the bursaries available for people from low income families, the widening of university intake has frozen. When people argue for the return to an elitist system they seem oblivious to the fact that in large part it is still here, the elite is the first born of middle class families with their younger siblings and working class friends left out.
So what do we have? A system which is straining between being torn in two directions. Universities cannot continue with the insufficient income they are currently receiving but to raise fees further to bring in enough cash will mean discouraging many people who need a degree and further distort the intake to middle class women, the eldest daughters of families. Some might say that is not a bad thing but it is certainly not a situation of opportunity for all who are capable of taking it. We seem to be reaching the limit of what universities can charge and with increased restrictions on students coming into the country they are increasingly limited from making up this shortfall by bringing in a few hundred more Chinese or Indian students.
I believe the current economic model for universities in unsustainable and the solutions on offer, change nothing or raise fees will not allow universities to grow. What will happen? My prediction is that we will see more closures, not necessarily of whole universities (though if that was the case my bet would be on London Metropolitan going first) but of departments and faculties as we have been seeing through the 2000s on a small scale. Universities will narrow down their curriculum to courses in which they have particular strengths or which attract premium fees (for that read business masters courses). We will see a specialisation of universities. Not necessarily a bad thing but it will chafe against the fact that increasingly students only go to their local university, so you may end up with regional clusters of specialised students.
Another likelihood are mergers. This has been happening for many years. The University of Southampton which I used to drive past quite regularly bought up Winchester School of Art as far back as 1996. The University of Exeter has an outpost in Falmouth; the University of Luton became the University of Bedfordshire with campuses at the two towns in the county: Luton and Bedford; the University of Hull is also at Scarborough. Typically they have taken over a local college. However, I can envisage the merger of whole universities, perhaps on the model of the University of the Creative Arts (not to be confused with University of the Arts London which merged six colleges in central and south London) which merged five colleges as far apart as Canterbury in Kent and Farnham in Hampshire, which are 148km (92 miles) from each other (Epsom in Surrey and Maidstone and Rochester in Kent are the other locations).
Perhaps Exeter and Plymouth will become University South West or some such. Perhaps it will become like the Reading and Leeds festival with universities at either end of the country merging because they have the same specialisms. What will the British government do when rather than setting up campuses in the Middle East, Malaysia or China now a British university is bought out by a French or German or American or a Chinese institution. What do they do when a religious organisation wants to take over one and replace a liberal approach with a more narrow one like religious universities in continental Europe and the USA? We have seen the difficulty with schools and the curriculum, notably on creationism, when church-focused individuals become involved in sponsoring them.
It seems likely that in the next five years we will see a decline in the number of people going to university simply because of the economic burden of doing so. The 'golden age' of mass higher education will not come to an end but may be less mass than it has been in the 2000s. I think also the number of universities in the UK will be smaller by 2015 than they are now whether through mergers and even closures. Is the UK workforce any better qualified than before the expansion of higher education? I would say yes. I would also say that many people from across the world have benefited and that is no bad thing whether you hope for development in African states or the emergence of democracy in China and the Gulf States. However, the high flying, quick expanding economy of higher education is fragile and was weak even before the expansion took off. Solutions are few and the ones introduced so far are really only makeshift and also have had deep consequences for those who would be/have been students, the outcome of which we may not see for decades. A serious rethink of the whole sector is needed but as with so much in Britain we will limp along with no major change watching as bits fall off and thousands of bitter experiences for individuals occur.
P.P. 09/12/2010: With all the current debate around the rise in university fees and the impact on student numbers and university finance I was interested to read what the university union UCU said to the BBC about the universities which would most likely close down. The UCU feels that a third of universities are at risk: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11940832 Interestingly, one of those they highlight is Edge Hill University which I had commented on here. As you look down the list you see, that, in fact the bulk of the ones they see at risk are post-1992 universities, even though many of these have worked on a very commercially focused basis right from the start. The BBC noted an off-the-record quote from a government minister saying that 'basket case' universities would go. It is interesting that two things I have commented on, the snobbery against certain institutions and the financial pressures of the higher education sector are combining.
I noted back in February 2009 how so many commentators felt that universities offering vocational qualifications or that did not have a history stretching back at least 50 years needed to be suppressed or at least flagged as being inadequate: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/02/uk-universities-snobbery-and-decay.html It is apparent that such people, including members of the current government, hope that the financial pressures on newer universities will do the job of 'weeding' them out. This is a mistaken view, as anyone who ever goes to Southampton will know. One of the universities there has been in existence since the 1950s, but financially it has been in debt and laying off staff constantly for the past two years. Down the road, the newer university, it appears, is doing a lot better. Having an established university does not mean it has a good economic model, in fact unlike those who battled in the 1990s to be recognised as proper universities, many of these older ones seem terribly complacent.
Of course, any reduction in universities will further drive down the opportunities for ordinary people to get on and reduce the skills and knowledge levels of the UK as a whole. However, even when the UK is facing such challenges too many influential people seem unable to understand that the country might be better off losing some of those institutions teaching Classics and Music, rather than trying to use the situation to drive out of business those who run Engineering and Social Work courses.
Since the 1990s we have seen a massive expansion in student numbers in line with the objective of having 50% of 18-year olds go to university. Though it was falling back in recent years, more older people were also going to university a trend which is reviving now people look for other options in the time of recession. In general most universities now have four times as many students as they did in the mid-1980s and in some towns as many as 1 in 10 people is a student; in Ormskirk, Lancashire, it is now in fact 1 in 2 during term time, though many of these commute from Liverpool. In fact despite students often being seen as 'other' and 'outsiders' on average universities are taking around a quarter and a third of their British students from the local area as it becomes increasingly difficult to afford to live away from home.
Ethically I feel it is vital that anyone with the ability and the desire to go to university has the opportunity to do so. I have no desire, as some commentators have advocated, that we return to an elitist system in which only 6% of 18-year olds attend university as was the case when I went in the late 1980s. We cannot turn back the clock anyway as these days a degree is entrance level requirement and many employers look for an MA or MSc from their prospective employers. This does not simply go for UK employers but globally so if British young people want to work here or abroad we cannot suddenly deny them the chance of getting a degree or we will find that the trend which has long been going on of well-qualified EU people especially from France, Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia will fill jobs in the UK. I am happy for them to do so if they are better, I am not anti-immigration, but I would at least like British young people to stand a chance in the competiton both here and overseas.
Those who want to return to the old days when universities were more categorised and polytechnics were clearly something else, forget that, in fact, it is often now the new universities, the former polytechnics, which are doing economically the best; the University of Southampton made a loss of £20 million this year whereas Edge Hill University (only became a university in 2005) has been turning a profit of £6.5 million each year. This is probably not surprising. Whilst new universities have sought to expand their curriculum they are still more likely to offer the vocationally-focused courses that attract the mass of people attending higher education, especially since the intake widened so much and which appeals to corporate sponsors, many of whom, even in the public sector, seem to remain ambivalent about employing graduates. Of course as London Metropolitan University shows not all new universities are thriving, but also note that University of Exeter shed over 300 staff and closed its chemistry department and another pre-1992 university in my region, the University of Southampton, has been making redundancies this year.
I think a rich culture needs a wide range of subjects taught, studied and researched and so am no advocate of Margaret Thatcher's principle of seeing humanities and social science subjects as 'a luxury' wanting everyone simply to be taught business or science. However, there is a clear demand for more vocational subjects which the older universities are not necessarily so good at. Above all, the economic model we have ended up with at the end of the 2000s is not sustainable. Students began having to pay fees in 1998 and at the time many went round asking what extra they were going to get for their money. What they did not realise was that universities needed that additional income simply to cover what they were already doing, not even to increase it.
Even with student numbers increasing, it has not stopped various institutions having to cut back. I have mentioned Exeter stopping chemistry and when I was in Milton Keynes the nearby University of Luton closed its entire Humanities Faculty in 2001 and I am sure there are many other cases I have not come across. As the redundancies make clear even with the current fee level of £3000 per year universities are not earning enough to keep on the staff they once employed. The CBI said that fees must rise to £5000 per year. This will be harsh on students, but, in fact, on simple economic grounds it is probably the minimum they need just to keep going as they are let alone expand or improve what they offer. The problems with visas which have meant around 20% of international students have been unable to take up the places they have been given at UK universities will bite hard on the universities as each international student (i.e. from outside the EU) pays fees three times the level of a UK student.
So, you say, 'alright, we raise student fees to £5000 per year', but that might be fine for the universities but in fact could backfire sharply by reducing student numbers. Back in 2001 students generally finished university with debts of £12,000, now the figure is around £25,000. Student loans are at a good rate and with the fall in the cost of living some former students even have negative interest (the sum they owe declines even if they make no repayment). However, very few students can sustain themselves on just the official student loans and incur large debts with banks and even harsher lenders. Partly this is because food is expensive in the UK and landlords/ladies charge high rents and rip students off for thousands of pounds; new trendy private student accommodation is appearing in many towns with even higher rents and fixed contracts worse than what is already in the private sector.
The debt hampers graduates right through their lives and actually discourages them from taking further qualifications or retraining later. In addition, it has helped make university a place for women rather than men. Since 2001 the number of women at university has exceeded the number of men and now the ratio is about 6 women for 4 men, with variations between subjects. Men are more debt averse and can often find low paid full-time work more immediately than women, but of course by not going to university they are ruling themselves from ever improving themselves from that kind of work.
Since 2002 the number of people from working class backgrounds going to university has not increased. The rise in student numbers since then has been among the middle class, so even with the bursaries available for people from low income families, the widening of university intake has frozen. When people argue for the return to an elitist system they seem oblivious to the fact that in large part it is still here, the elite is the first born of middle class families with their younger siblings and working class friends left out.
So what do we have? A system which is straining between being torn in two directions. Universities cannot continue with the insufficient income they are currently receiving but to raise fees further to bring in enough cash will mean discouraging many people who need a degree and further distort the intake to middle class women, the eldest daughters of families. Some might say that is not a bad thing but it is certainly not a situation of opportunity for all who are capable of taking it. We seem to be reaching the limit of what universities can charge and with increased restrictions on students coming into the country they are increasingly limited from making up this shortfall by bringing in a few hundred more Chinese or Indian students.
I believe the current economic model for universities in unsustainable and the solutions on offer, change nothing or raise fees will not allow universities to grow. What will happen? My prediction is that we will see more closures, not necessarily of whole universities (though if that was the case my bet would be on London Metropolitan going first) but of departments and faculties as we have been seeing through the 2000s on a small scale. Universities will narrow down their curriculum to courses in which they have particular strengths or which attract premium fees (for that read business masters courses). We will see a specialisation of universities. Not necessarily a bad thing but it will chafe against the fact that increasingly students only go to their local university, so you may end up with regional clusters of specialised students.
Another likelihood are mergers. This has been happening for many years. The University of Southampton which I used to drive past quite regularly bought up Winchester School of Art as far back as 1996. The University of Exeter has an outpost in Falmouth; the University of Luton became the University of Bedfordshire with campuses at the two towns in the county: Luton and Bedford; the University of Hull is also at Scarborough. Typically they have taken over a local college. However, I can envisage the merger of whole universities, perhaps on the model of the University of the Creative Arts (not to be confused with University of the Arts London which merged six colleges in central and south London) which merged five colleges as far apart as Canterbury in Kent and Farnham in Hampshire, which are 148km (92 miles) from each other (Epsom in Surrey and Maidstone and Rochester in Kent are the other locations).
Perhaps Exeter and Plymouth will become University South West or some such. Perhaps it will become like the Reading and Leeds festival with universities at either end of the country merging because they have the same specialisms. What will the British government do when rather than setting up campuses in the Middle East, Malaysia or China now a British university is bought out by a French or German or American or a Chinese institution. What do they do when a religious organisation wants to take over one and replace a liberal approach with a more narrow one like religious universities in continental Europe and the USA? We have seen the difficulty with schools and the curriculum, notably on creationism, when church-focused individuals become involved in sponsoring them.
It seems likely that in the next five years we will see a decline in the number of people going to university simply because of the economic burden of doing so. The 'golden age' of mass higher education will not come to an end but may be less mass than it has been in the 2000s. I think also the number of universities in the UK will be smaller by 2015 than they are now whether through mergers and even closures. Is the UK workforce any better qualified than before the expansion of higher education? I would say yes. I would also say that many people from across the world have benefited and that is no bad thing whether you hope for development in African states or the emergence of democracy in China and the Gulf States. However, the high flying, quick expanding economy of higher education is fragile and was weak even before the expansion took off. Solutions are few and the ones introduced so far are really only makeshift and also have had deep consequences for those who would be/have been students, the outcome of which we may not see for decades. A serious rethink of the whole sector is needed but as with so much in Britain we will limp along with no major change watching as bits fall off and thousands of bitter experiences for individuals occur.
P.P. 09/12/2010: With all the current debate around the rise in university fees and the impact on student numbers and university finance I was interested to read what the university union UCU said to the BBC about the universities which would most likely close down. The UCU feels that a third of universities are at risk: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11940832 Interestingly, one of those they highlight is Edge Hill University which I had commented on here. As you look down the list you see, that, in fact the bulk of the ones they see at risk are post-1992 universities, even though many of these have worked on a very commercially focused basis right from the start. The BBC noted an off-the-record quote from a government minister saying that 'basket case' universities would go. It is interesting that two things I have commented on, the snobbery against certain institutions and the financial pressures of the higher education sector are combining.
I noted back in February 2009 how so many commentators felt that universities offering vocational qualifications or that did not have a history stretching back at least 50 years needed to be suppressed or at least flagged as being inadequate: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/02/uk-universities-snobbery-and-decay.html It is apparent that such people, including members of the current government, hope that the financial pressures on newer universities will do the job of 'weeding' them out. This is a mistaken view, as anyone who ever goes to Southampton will know. One of the universities there has been in existence since the 1950s, but financially it has been in debt and laying off staff constantly for the past two years. Down the road, the newer university, it appears, is doing a lot better. Having an established university does not mean it has a good economic model, in fact unlike those who battled in the 1990s to be recognised as proper universities, many of these older ones seem terribly complacent.
Of course, any reduction in universities will further drive down the opportunities for ordinary people to get on and reduce the skills and knowledge levels of the UK as a whole. However, even when the UK is facing such challenges too many influential people seem unable to understand that the country might be better off losing some of those institutions teaching Classics and Music, rather than trying to use the situation to drive out of business those who run Engineering and Social Work courses.
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